


Dead wings carried like a paper kite

by illwynd



Category: Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Dark, Grief/Mourning, Horror, M/M, Psychological Horror, Resurrection, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-08-27 20:33:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 27
Words: 48,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8415760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: In the heat of battle, Loki kills his brother. As soon as Thor lies dead at his feet, though, he realizes this is not what he wanted. So he brings Thor back, and surely all is well again. Right?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen from Robert Frost's "Design"
> 
> This story has been a long time in the works, and while I'll only have the first couple chapters posted before Halloween, I wanted to share it with everybody at last. 
> 
> I also wanted to make clear that it is a very dark story in which a lot of awful things happen. I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Happy Halloween, everybody!

I.I

Doom was there when Thor fell.

The angry little god had come to him some days before, pacing with plans and alliance, come to be stroked and humored, and Doom had played along because of his own aims, his own purposes. It would undoubtedly end no differently from any other such incident—Doom knew Loki well, his ego and his transparent obsession with his shining sibling—but Doom counted upon his own ability to find gains where others feared to tread. He was certain he could reap his own rewards, and he had no hesitation about standing upon the battlefield of gods. It was as simple as staying out from between them as they inevitably clashed.

That was how he was there to see it.

Doom heard the thunder god's shout, echoing off the darkened, half-ruined buildings all around.

"Brother, I plead with you again—cease this madness! I do not wish to fight you. I have never wished to fight you!"

A shout in the midst of battle and yet it was at the same time a private plea, distinct from demand. Beneath metal, Doom's eyebrow raised, and he listened vaguely for Loki's reply, but was able to hear only a garbled snarl. A sneering refusal, no doubt.

How peculiar it must be, he thought, to have an enemy in one's own sibling, who must know one's vulnerabilities, who had seen one's weaknesses before they had fully formed, with whom one shared deep feeling before the coming enmity was known.

Doom was pondering this—glad of his lack of any such connection to his own rivals—when Loki struck, plunging his knife deep into his brother’s chest.

Doom watched as the startled thunder god stumbled back two steps, blinking down at the gaping wound, and then collapsed to his knees, the gush of crimson pouring down his chest, pouring over silver like a waterfall. Doom watched; had he been inclined more to poetry, he would have said that shock flashed in the thunder god's eyes like lightning behind a dark cloud, pain and panic flickering after it as his face went white. Doom was not at all surprised when actual drops of rain shook loose from the sky, plinking against metal and concrete.

Then the wounded god sank the rest of the way to the ground, and the wet stain beneath his body spread, and silence reigned, except for the heavy breaths of the trickster still looming above the fallen shape. Bending down, morbid curiosity twitching on his brow. The red knife still dripping from his hand.

Doom found himself perplexed when a moment later the trickster’s breaths became choked as he followed Thor down, falling to his own knees and shakily gathering the corpse into his arms. Taking hold of its shoulders and wrenching at them as if to wake him but only succeeding in making the head tip back at a nauseating angle, the mouth falling open. Loki's lips were curled back into a grimace, his brow twisted above, and he murmured to himself words Doom could not perceive.

Doom did not attempt to interfere. 

And in a moment both Loki and his fallen enemy disappeared in a dark eyeblink, as if they were behind a closing curtain, just as a distant clamoring commotion began to arise, the sound of backup heading their way.

Behind his mask, Doom scowled. Alliance with such a fickle creature had always been a known hazard; he had always suspected that Loki’s emotional attachment to his nemesis would prove his downfall. 

But Doom was no such fool, and he escaped before the other heroes could arrive to further spoil his day.

I.II

The wind whistled in this place, a dark mountainside, empty and unseen, that Loki had chosen when he pulled them away from the dingy meanness of the alleyway. It whistled past Loki's ears, making him shiver, and gently it ruffled Thor's hair.

This was not what Loki had wanted. This was all wrong, the strands of limp blond under his fingers, the clammy skin, the hollow in the pit of his stomach. The knuckles already unwilling to bend when he tried to clasp Thor's hand in his. It was all wrong. It was a mistake.

Loki had wanted victory. He had wanted Thor fallen before him. He did not want this.

For one instant it had felt good. It had felt so incredibly good, defeating him—the shock on his face and the way he stumbled as the awareness hit him. For one instant something within Loki had sung in triumph, leaping and laughing inside and ready to lunge forward to taunt Thor with it, the blood spilling down and his weakness and Loki’s victory. Ready to grab Thor by the throat and show it to him again and again. 

But then Thor fell, his blood still flowing out in throbbing gushes, his eyes full of hurt and confusion. And then he had died. And the feeling of triumph vanished.

Loki hadn't wanted this, the cold wind whipping around him as he crouched there over his brother’s dead body, alone and lost. 

His only choice was to undo the mistake, to bring Thor back, no matter that no sorcerer had ever done so before. None were Loki. And none had ever been so desperate as he.

The decision—the swell of certainty that filled him as he nodded to himself and took a few steadying breaths—made it easier to set to work. The brief frantic terror subsided into the back of his mind. The tremor went out of his hands. There was still a sense of urgency, of course; no one else had done this before, but he couldn’t imagine it would do any good to delay. And he didn’t want to expend energy transporting them anywhere more comfortable, and he wouldn’t waste time  _ carrying  _ Thor’s body. So it would have to be here.

Gingerly he laid out his brother’s lifeless form, arranging him on his back, and for a few moments Loki only knelt beside it, gathering himself, devising the spell that would bring Thor back. Feeling for each piece of it, instinctive, determined.

Then, when he was sure he had found it, he reached out his hands, a faint, pale light glowing beneath them. He tried not to notice the deep shadows it cast on Thor’s face, the blackness of his sunken eyes, the waxen pallor of his bloodless lips, parted and thin. Soon enough, none of that would matter anymore. It would be as if it had never occurred. The mistake erased and undone and forgotten.

Loki took a breath, and began.

I.III

Thor's eyes opened hours later, and he came to all at once, with a jolt, thrashing, groaning and shoving at the hands that Loki had brought to Thor's shoulders to hold him in place, to keep him from hurting himself further.

Thor's eyes were wide and blind and he shoved and kicked, tossing his head in a frantic motion, trying to get away.

"Stop fighting, you dolt!" Loki growled, trying to keep hold of Thor’s wrists, trying to pinion Thor’s twisting body with his own limbs. "I'm trying to help you!"

For a moment Thor continued to struggle, and a low, helpless moan emanated from the depths of his chest.

"Be still, damn you!"

That time Thor seemed to hear him, at least, though his hands were still weakly trying to push Loki away while the fog in his eyes slowly cleared.

“Loki?” he croaked, his voice a weak rasp.

"Yes, brother, it's me. Are you going to be calm if I release you?"

Thor nodded.

When they were untangled, Loki helped Thor to sit up, then watched as  Thor stared down at himself, at his bare skin, gooseflesh rising in the night chill. He looked to Loki in confusion.

“Here,” Loki answered, wrapping his own cape around Thor’s shoulders, pulling the edges close for warmth and decency. 

Thor was still frowning. “What… happened to my garments?”

Loki had stripped the armor off Thor's cold body while he waited for him to waken again, and then the blood-soaked cloth beneath. Loki had not been able to bear the sight.

"They were ruined. I got rid of them," he murmured.

Thor looked even more concerned, and Loki heaved an exasperated sigh.

"We fought, brother, as we have so many times, only this time I hurt you quite badly. But I healed you afterward, so you needn't look like that."

“I don’t remember,” Thor said, and his eyes left the unmarked skin of his bare chest, rising to meet Loki's gaze again. They were deep blue in the darkness under the stars of Midgard, as the wind rustled in unseen leaves somewhere nearby.

Loki shrugged. “Perhaps that’s for the best.”

"You healed me," Thor repeated, and Loki couldn't tell whether the tone of Thor's voice was one of awe or disbelief. Only that it galled him, and the rush of annoyance came as a relief, as a familiar, comforting breath after the strain of the previous hours.

"Yes, well, there's no one else here who could have," he snapped.

Thor flinched and looked away again.

And it was certainly time for Loki to be on his way. 

It was just as he had said to Thor: Loki had hurt him, and Loki had healed him, and now his obligation was over, wasn't it? Thor could make his own way by himself. He was surely well enough. So Loki was free to leave, and he could be done with this miserable night and forget any of it had ever happened. 

He had pulled himself together and gotten all the way to his feet before he noticed the way Thor's head had bowed, shoulders slumping, the way he seemed to shiver in the damp air, or... 

Or his entire form was quaking for some other reason. Loki’s brow knitted as he realized that Thor was weeping, face buried against his arms but the wet sound of it obvious enough.

That, Loki could not take. “What, Thor, what?” he snapped. “I healed you. Why in all the realms are you crying now?”

There was a sharp inhalation and Thor raised his head, red-rimmed eyes focusing on Loki. “Because you healed me. And if you healed me, then…”

Loki’s eyes narrowed. “Then…?”

Thor choked back another sniffling sob, shaking his head and wiping at his face with both hands. “Nothing. Nothing. I… I wish to go home.”

Loki stared as Thor awkwardly, unsteadily forced his body to move, shoving himself up to his knees and then carefully getting his legs under him, his task made more difficult by the necessity of keeping the cape clutched around himself. He grimaced in obvious pain, had to stop halfway through to take a few deep breaths, eyes blinking as if dazed, but he managed it. And then he truly started to stumble away, dead leaves crunching and twigs snapping at his feet.

What did Thor think he was doing?

“Thor, wait,” Loki said, scrambling after and grabbing hold of Thor’s arm—only because he looked as if he might topple over at any moment.

Thor tried to twitch away. “Why?” he mumbled. “I said I wish to go home. I mean to return to Asgard. So I thank you for having troubled with me, but you need not...”

This was not simple annoyance but red-hot anger, burning in Loki's belly as he became aware of the words that were about to leave his lips.

“Clearly you won’t make it on your own,” he said.

Thor stopped. He turned. He stared at Loki in confusion.

“You look near ready to collapse. Wait a moment and I’ll help you. I’ll… I’ll come with you,” Loki clarified.

Thor stared then in disbelief.

“You will return? You will come home, with me?”

Only a fool would go. Asgard was not Loki’s home. It had not ever truly been, and no one had pretended it was in years. Nothing waited for him there but punishment and unpleasant memories and long-dead dreams.

Loki's jaw clenched as he nodded.

Thor made a sound of pitiful gratitude, practically hurling himself into Loki's embrace, and Loki for some reason allowed it, wrapping his own hands around his brother’s body to sweep down the damp, rumpled cloth against his back. He could feel Thor’s heart beating beneath it, sharp and rapid but strong.

The weight of him sunk into Loki's arms seemed oddly heavy, but just at the moment Loki didn’t care.


	2. Chapter 2

II.I

The bridge stretched as a thin thread of light between black waters and black sky, and as they made their tortuous way along it, Thor supported on his brother’s arm, Loki began to have second thoughts.

This _was_ madness.

The bright bolt of the Bifrost had carried them away nearly the moment Loki had let them become visible to the guardian again, as soon as the name left Thor’s lips, and then in the next moment they had been standing together in the rebuilt observatory, golden and ornate, with Heimdall standing at its center, sword in his hand. He had let them pass at a weak gesture from Thor, his gaze trailing inscrutably after them.

Yet he would have sent word. Loki knew that, and he knew what would greet them at the end of the bridge.

There was still time for him to change his mind.

He had brought Thor back this far, nearly home and within easy reach of aid, and no one could fault him if he fled now, slipping away into his own secret paths. There was really no reason for him to be here, supporting his greatest enemy upon his arm.

They had spent the last years doing battle with each other. He had spent the last several years hating Thor and trying to make Thor see the truth of that sentiment as well.

But another step they took, and another, another, a dozen more, and Loki found himself not leaving. He glanced sidelong at his brother’s face, trying to find the moment at which it would be opportune for him to slip away, only… the light of the Bifrost had always seemed strange. Its illumination faint, its colors casting unfamiliar hues upon everything. It was no different now, and it made the shadows around Thor’s eyes seem deep. It made him look even more tired and unwell than before.

“Not much farther now, brother,” Loki murmured, and Thor nodded.

And it wasn’t. A few dozen more steps and Loki could begin to make out the shadow that waited at the end of the bridge. A larger shadow than he had been expecting, writhing slightly with movement the way deeper shadows do in the darkness, and only as they approached closer did he begin to see the forest of stars glimmering just above it, stars on the tips of thin straight boles.

He could not help but wonder what word Heimdall could have sent that would have justified this sort of reception, not just Odin with a few guards but what looked to be an entire company of Einherjar, with spears in their hands. He wondered what they thought he would be able to do, why they were so afraid of Loki even occupied as he was with his brother leaning weak upon his arm.

Under other circumstances, he might have preened over such a thing. But this time it boded ill, and he had no means to resist them.

“Thor,” he said, soft and urgent, without stopping their slow progress. “Thor, there is something you must do for me.”

Thor made a sleepy, questioning sound in response.

“You must make Odin release me. He will have me imprisoned for the rest of our lives unless you prevail upon him. You know that.”

Thor lifted his head, blinking, and glanced between Loki and the end of the bridge, only then seeming to notice the looming shadow beginning to resolve finally into individual silhouettes.

“Promise me,” Loki demanded. “I am relying on you, brother.”

Thor blinked again and seemed to see Loki truly. “I will,” he said. “I vow it.”

When they came near enough that Loki could distinguish which of the dim shapes was Odin—a mere twenty paces in the gloom—the Allfather’s hand was already lifted above his head.

As the spell sprang from Odin’s fingers and struck him, Loki felt the heaviness of Thor against his arm, the faint tremor of his movement, and as darkness splashed across his vision he imagined that somehow he would end up falling over the edge for a second time, and Thor would end up falling with him, the two of them going down as a tangle of hopeless limbs and tumbling into oblivion together. The thought seemed oddly fitting.

But then the last light was snuffed out.

II.II

It was several days later that Loki stood before his once-father in private audience, rubbing at the red bands on his wrists where the manacles had chafed him.

Odin greeted him with neither warmth nor pretense and gestured at a chair across from him, thickly cushioned with furs. A cup of red mead sat on the table beside it; a hollow-seeming gesture of civility after the time Loki spent in the dungeons.

It had been a harrowing few days, wondering if he had made his last mistake in coming back, cursing himself and Odin and the very walls. Only when the door creaked open on its hinges, revealing solemn guards beyond but no sign of the sort of fanfare with which an execution would certainly be accompanied, did Loki’s fear and worry cool.

Odin surely did not know what had happened; Loki would not have been here now, rather than rotting in darkness or swinging by his neck, if his once-father had any inkling of what had occurred in that Midgardian alleyway. And the fact that this audience was taking place meant that Thor had done as he vowed and prevailed upon him. So Loki at least had a chance.

Loki drained half the cup while Odin studied him in silence, his one eye piercing.

“Well?” Loki asked at last.

“Your brother pled for your release,” Odin answered, and Loki could not help but let out a soft breath. Almost a chuckle. “And your mother agreed with him. I have been told that it should count in your favor that you returned of your own accord, without force.”

"How generous of you," Loki said in reply, forcing his lips into a thin smile rather than a smirk, restraint rather than contempt. Only because he wanted to not see the inside of the cell again, and he did, for some mad reason, want to see that Thor was well before he made his escape from this realm once more. “I take it you mean to grant his plea? Are there to be other conditions of my release?”

Odin did not answer immediately. His cup was set aside, his wrinkled hand loosely curled upon it; there was a rustle of black wings from the perch above his seat, and a curved beak clacked next to Odin’s ear, black against grey-white. But when Odin's eye fell upon him again, the coldness had thawed and he instead looked only aged. Tired.

"My son," he said. "Must we play this game?"

Bitterness curled in Loki's chest, but he resisted as well the urge to answer with anger as he had the last time Odin called him his son. "What game would that be?"

Odin sighed, shoulders rising and falling in a defeated gesture. “What I require is a single answer, and I will have it or you will remain in that cell, no matter what your brother vowed to you. My question is this: Why have you chosen to return? I am certain you knew you would not be welcomed with open arms.”

“Thor wanted to return home,” Loki said. “And I chose to accompany him.”

“And the reason behind your choice?”

“Because he needed my aid, or did you somehow miss the part when I came back as his walking crutch?”

“Yet I am given to understand that you were the one who injured him.”

Loki could not keep himself from scoffing at that, but he got hold of himself after and let out a breath, took another mouthful of mead. "Yes, I did. I’m like that, you see. It’s the wickedness of my origins. I simply can’t help it."

Odin shook his head, a heavy breath leaving his lips, and for a long silence Odin only gazed at him. Studied him, his eye weighing Loki somehow, and Loki bore it and said no more.

Then Odin’s head tipped forward and his hand rose to his brow.

“Very well, Loki. I know I do not have your honesty, but I did not expect it. Nonetheless, I believe you have not come to do harm. You may go.”

Loki made the obligatory bow just as obsequiously as he could before departing, free, out into the hall of Gladsheim, an unexpected spring coming into his step.

II.III

As soon as Loki was gone, Odin sighed, his fingers twining idly in the little loop of twisted fibers he wore as a charm, and he swallowed back a dram of his special brew of mead, though it did little to change his mood.

Loki was certainly his son, having inherited his qualities such that he was now exceedingly wearying to deal with. Loki was the shattered mirror into which Odin found it difficult to gaze, his own traits misaimed and twisted within it.

Odin had given Loki the welcome he expected (and the one that Aesir law in truth required), and he had ordered Loki to be locked in the dungeon afterward for the same reason.

The secret that no one else would ever know, though, was that his single eye had brimmed at the sight of those two figures returning home across the Bifrost, one leaning upon the other. Odin knew how many times Thor had begged his brother to return home, and how vehemently Loki had always refused; he had by now held on to little hope, and he had seen that hope fading away even in Thor’s eyes, and in Frigga’s.

So why now? What had changed Loki’s mind?

Over the past several days, Odin had picked at these questions like a scab, and he had come to no conclusions. He spoke to his elder son and received no insight; Thor described a battle between them, much like dozens or hundreds that had come before, with only the difference of Loki’s final acquiescence in the calm after. He weathered Frigga’s folded arms but found that she could make no better guess than that perhaps Loki's heart had changed, as all hearts might with time.

Perhaps that should have been answer enough, but Odin did not trust it. In all the ways that Loki took after him, he did not believe that it would be as simple as that. Instead he was certain there was something strange here, something hidden. He felt most certain of this—oddly enough—when he spoke with Thor, though he could not put his finger upon why.

There was something strange, and Loki surely knew of it, even if he was not the cause. Odin felt certain of that as he drained his last mouthful. Loki knew—and just as certainly Loki would never speak it to him.

So Odin would have to watch and find out for himself.


	3. Chapter 3

III.I

At nightfall, the great hall was raucous and full of shadows.

A space so broad that one could not see one end from the other, its heights lost in a gloom of smoke that had long since blackened the high timbers. A place where warriors and Valkyries and gods feasted together endlessly. Fires for the roasting were dotted here and there between long tables. The air was a tangle of noises, of shouts and songs and cups and plates clattering. It reeked of ale and meat and sparks, of scattered straw and sweat and distant clouds.

Through that familiar, overheated chaos, Loki let himself follow in his brother's wake.

It was clear that great amounts of celebration had occurred there over the previous days, everyone overexcited at the return of their prince after so long away in the mortal realm, yet they all still shouted and called to Thor as he passed, calling for him to join them, as if they had not greeted him yet. 

Thor smiled politely and nodded his thanks at each but refused them, pressing onward toward the edge of the room where the noise was lower.

“Haven’t they already had their fill of welcoming you back?” Loki sneered as they left the disappointed crowd behind.

But Thor shook his head. “I have not seen them yet. I had no heart to celebrate while you were still in the cells.” 

When Loki returned his gaze, Thor smiled at him, soft and hopeful. 

Loki looked away, spying out an empty table for them to share and heading for it. “Come on.”

Thor had been looking at him like that ever since he’d found him an hour or two before. Loki had been stalking swiftly from the Allfather’s presence. He had not been precisely sure where he meant to go except that after days in the cells, “away” had sounded wise. He had a vague plan of going to check that Thor was indeed hale again and the spell had worked as intended and then perhaps departing again before anyone could stop him.

Yet he had rounded a corner and there was his brother, hurrying toward him, the anxious look on his face splitting into a grin. And Loki had been carried along with him ever since, once again finding himself unable to slip away. 

It was easier, as they sat down to eat, not to think about that.

Instead, the terrible familiarity of it all, the suspicious glances in his direction from the tables around them and the unpleasant clatter of the vast space. He had known this was what he would be returning to. He had been expecting this, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear.

Loki ripped the meat from the bone with his teeth, viciously, and he downed his ale quickly enough to dull his discomfort, and he went along with Thor’s faltering attempts to make smalltalk with him, keeping the conversation well away from their past and family and Midgard and anything else that would have immediately gone sour, and he continued trying not to notice how Thor looked at him. 

When his first drink was gone, he had another. 

By the time the smaller, more subdued group of Thor’s closest friends arrived hesitantly at their table—a shadow sweeping across them making Loki look up sharply at first, out of habit, and then frowning when Thor looked to him as if for permission—Loki was intoxicated enough to allow it.

He grinned, sharp. Gestured at the empty benches beside them. "By all means," he said.

It was awkward. Thor's dearest friends, all gathering around and smiling at Loki politely and not asking any of the questions they must have been wondering—though Thor had surely already told them what had happened. Loki rolled his half-empty mug in his hands and sat back, glancing over at Thor, wondering whether Thor had demanded their best behavior toward him now.

He likely had, and Loki wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that.

As the evening went on, Loki at some point found himself paying no attention to the chatter around him, mind empty with the hum of intoxication and the heavy sensation of a full belly and the disorientation of the dim, loud room. 

And Thor, still smiling whenever he caught Loki's eyes upon him, in a way Thor hadn’t smiled at him in years.

Loki decided he’d had quite enough, then, and he pushed himself to his feet, steadying himself with both hands upon the table until the room stopped spinning. 

"Are you turning in for the night, brother? Let me come with you,” Thor said as he did.

Loki shook his head. "No… no, you stay."

"I would be glad to..."

But insistently Loki waved him away. "No. I will be fine. We can talk more in the morning."

Thor subsided, with a longing look, and Loki was glad of it as he turned and stumbled away.

“I think he must be out of practice,” Volstagg mused in the wake of Loki’s departure, staring after the drunken prince as he swayed through the crowd toward the exits.

III.II

Sif, seated on the bench across from Thor, pushed a hand through her hair as she enjoyed the evening. She was jostled by the serving maids passing between the benches and tables, she could hear someone singing in a rough voice somewhere off on the other side of the hall and could almost recognize the song, she propped her chin on a hand and listened with one ear as the men at the next table discussed the latest tidings from Nidavellir, but truth be told she too was already warm with drink and found none of it held her attention.

Thor seemed likewise inattentive; she noticed him glancing the way that Loki had gone with a vague and distant smile playing on his lips.

No matter how she felt about Loki, she understood, and she was happy for Thor. She had known both of them since they were children, and Thor was her dearest friend, and it had been clear enough to her that he would never be truly content while he and his brother were at odds.

“I do hope Loki appreciates what you did for him,” Sif said to him in a quiet moment, as his eyes began to haze, reaching over to squeeze his arm fondly. "I am surprised the Allfather let him free, but... I know it's what you wanted. And I'm glad for you."

Thor gave her a warm smile in response, but for a moment he stayed silent. Sif had almost become distracted by yet more gossip when he finally spoke.

"It has been a long time, but my brother and I... he would have done as much for me."

Sif turned to look at him, her half-smile stuck in place. "I know," she said.

"I don't want him to feel any debt to me for getting Father to free him. I owe him just as much, Sif. He healed me, when we were enemies..."

Sif nodded. Thor had not said much about what had happened; she had not wanted to pry so she had not asked, keeping her worries and fears to herself. But she had guessed, with everything she knew of Thor, that it might be something like that. That the brothers had fought and Thor had been injured and for some reason this time Loki had regretted it (or pretended to). And now all of Thor's hopes were pinned upon their reunion. 

She looked at her friend with sympathy, patted his arm again, hoping he would not have his hopes once more shattered. 

She also had a moment of vivid memory of the times centuries ago when Loki was first becoming truly difficult to get along with. She’d spent more than a few drunken nights comforting Thor, trying to soothe his temper after Loki had been cruel to him in their fights. 

This hopeful quiet and its hesitant smiles should have seemed better than that, but it still worried her. 

At one point, Thor’s eyes focused down upon his empty cup with vague surprise.

"I need another," he said.

Sif shrugged. “They’ll be back around in a bit.”

Thor frowned, impatient. “Nay, I will go and find...”

There was a restlessness to his motions as Thor got to his feet, gaze hunting around the room.   

So Sif nodded gamely. “Bring another for me as well!”

III.III

Upon the blackened rafters, Muninn perched with his feathers fluffed out.

From that vantage, the hall stretched out into oblivion, even to a raven's sharp eye, but he tilted his head and stared at a single table below. Then at the figure that detached itself from it, bobbing away through the teeming aisles. 

The bird had been lazily preening to pass the time, keeping his watch as instructed with ease between the catching of a few bothersome mites from a spot on the back of his wing. But now he crouched and the inky curve of his eye followed the particular golden blotch below as it moved.

Another blotch carrying a large round tray, the Allfather's son moving toward it... for another moment Muninn's beak scratched beneath the feathers... 

He looked back just in time to see the collision, tensing on his perch at the sound of glass smashing, a few neighboring shouts adding yet more to the din. He tilted his head. 

The entire large round tray had gone down, and now the other blotch—the servant girl—was standing still as a mouse in front of Thor, who seemed to shake himself before stooping to help the girl gather up the worst of it. 

Muninn let out a soft croak. Such distraction was not usual for Odin’s son, but on the other hand accidents were hardly a surprise in a place with so much ale and so many unsteady feet. Wouldn’t be worth mentioning to Odin at all.


	4. Chapter 4

IV.I

Loki woke the next morning still half dressed but in his own bed, and he was not struck by this until he blinked away the last fog of slumber and the lingering waver of too much drink.

His own bed. His own old chambers in the palace.

He vaguely recalled coming to the doors in the night and finding them sealed by his own magic—protection spells that had been in place all this time—but also by new locks bolting them shut from the outside. He vaguely recalled ripping those locks away in dizzy frustration before pulling the door open and stepping into the cold, shadowy emptiness within, the space gloomy and dusty, disused and abandoned.

As he pushed himself up away from the indent of his body in the mattress now, his lips curled in distaste. 

He had cared not a whit when he fell face-first into the pillow last night, but this was hardly a place he really wanted to be anymore. It belonged to a younger, more foolish Loki, one he did not want to remember.

After only a few moments of waking, he was outside the doors again, casting a quick spell to bar them once more and another to give the appearance that the locks were still there and undamaged.

And then he trod the short distance to Thor’s rooms, because he had a vague recollection that in his drunken state he had promised he would do so.

The lock adorning that other door came as a surprise, matching as it did the one that had been on his own, and he stood there giving the little metal latch a perplexed frown until he heard footsteps approaching.

"What is this about?" he asked.

Thor looked apologetic. "I... I haven't dwelt here for some time, and it only just now occurred to me that you would not know that, else I would have warned you not to seek me here."

"Oh?"

Standing there in the empty corridor together, it could have been a hundred years ago. Except none of it felt the same, strange and unsettled and even more peculiar for how deeply familiar it was.

Thor ran a hand through his hair and glanced away, not meeting Loki's eyes as he answered.

“It became difficult for me, being here. I disliked having to put aside my memories every time I returned home from Midgard. Mother and Father noticed, and especially since it had been decided that Father would retain the throne for the time being..."

"So where are you living now?" Loki asked, cutting off the ramble of Thor's words.

"Bilskirnir," Thor said with a shrug. "You remember it, right?"

The largest hall in Asgard next to the palace itself. Five hundred rooms, majestic and golden.

Loki gave a snort. "Of course. It would suit you."

Thor still wasn’t meeting his eyes. "I've spent hardly any time there, really. It hasn't become home to me yet. It is simply a dwelling."

Loki could hear all the things Thor wasn't saying—all the things he'd not quite said when they were still enemies upon Midgard. Blaming Loki for upending his life through his absence, for denying Thor what he wanted and felt entitled to have: the obedient, adoring brother who had always gone along with his demands. And yet Thor's furtive glances were indeed sparking something like guilt in Loki's belly, making his shoulders stiffen.

This, this was why he had never given in and come back to this place. And it was why he had been growing more and more anxious to escape since he had. 

Thor was fine, and there was no reason for Loki to stay and every reason to go.

"I'm sure you'll just have to give it time," Loki answered at last in clipped tones. "Was there anything else you wanted to speak of, while I'm here?"

Thor’s brows drew in and he looked at Loki fully. "While you're here? You're not leaving again, are you?"

"I said I'd come back with you. I never said anything about staying."

Thor blinked, and his chest rose and fell. "What? Loki, no, you must stay..."

"Why must I? You're well again, and you got what you wanted."

"What I wanted was for you to be here with me!"

Loki's eyes narrowed at the way Thor's fists were suddenly clenched at his sides, a muscle in his jaw twitching. The way his voice rose, ending in a strangled whine as he obviously tried to catch himself but failed. Thor's temper—Loki had almost forgotten how it was to see Thor angry when they weren’t already fighting.

Loki scoffed and turned away, only for Thor's hand to grip tightly on his shoulder, turning him back again, and Loki's anger boiled and he shoved that hand off him violently—

Something washed across Thor's face, a look of terrible rage that Loki had only seen there a few times before, in the midst of the worst battles.

And then it was gone, replaced by Thor's shoulders sinking and his lips pressing together, eyes welling nearly enough to spill over, the wetness gleaming in the light.

“Please stay. At least for a while,” Thor muttered. “I need more time with you. Please.”

The guilt twinged again in Loki's belly, mingled with annoyance and confusion at what had just transpired between them.

"All right, I'll stay," he said, brows twisted as he peered at his brother.

Thor nodded and wiped disconsolately at his face when the tears fell. "Thank you," he said.

IV.II

That evening, just after sundown, the carriage arrived at Bilskirnir from the palace, and the household was in a flurry of activity.

Henrik, the lead porter, had received the message some hours before that the lord of the hall would be returning soon. And that his brother would be accompanying him, coming to take up residence there as well, and rooms were to be made ready for him next to Thor's own chambers. He had passed the message along, and since then there had been a constant rush of people to and fro, and chatter flying as well.

For the past few years, the household had been in an unending lull of readiness, broken by brief periods in which Thor had returned home for weeks at a time, but even then it had been strange. He had always seemed preoccupied, either preparing to throw himself back into the troubles of another realm or doing as the Allfather bade him out of a sense of obligation. Henrik had been in Thor's service since long before the move to this hall, and in his own private thoughts he considered that the prince had since his brother's departure been behaving quite unlike himself, distracted and never at ease.

Thus Henrik was willing to give the benefit of the doubt in the face of this latest news, no matter how the entire realm knew that Loki had turned villainous. If his return helped Thor, Henrik wouldn't say a word against him.

Thor greeted him when the pair of them arrived, and Henrik returned the greeting with a bow. The whole exchange lasted only moments, but Henrik was still thinking of it as he hefted the heavy chests down from the back of the carriage under fire-streaked skies, birds calling in the fields all around.

It had been years since he'd seen Loki, so it was hard to say for sure how much of the change in his appearance was recent, but he certainly looked older, crueler, colder. His glance was sharp, but in an almost unnoticed way, like a habit.

Thor, on the other hand... Thor was smiling, at least. Thor smiled as he invited his brother inside, eager and anxious, and he seemed overbrimming with energy as he passed, Loki's steps calmer and smoother beside him.

Henrik wiped the sweat from his brow when he set the chests down within the chambers that were now Loki's, and he hoped that this would somehow truly be for the best for them all.

IV.III

The clouds darkened that first night. It was fitting, in a way, for the thunder god's return.

Bilskirnir was a warm and well-made nest, threaded with gold under granite skies. Outside Thor's chamber, the wind whistled and whirled. Rain tapped on the windows and pattered on the roof above. Chill crept on the air and the storm rumbled through the ground.

Inside, the brothers spent the evening sitting before a hearth filled with rosy, crackling flames, sipping glasses of wine, bare feet folded under themselves. Loki thumbing through several of his old books that he had missed and Thor sometimes asking Loki to read a passage to him, perhaps, and Loki giving an odd look but complying. Both trying to be comfortable with each other again. 

In that moment, it was possible to believe that all would indeed be well.


	5. Chapter 5

V.I

For reasons he himself could not fathom, Loki had decided to do as Thor asked and stay.

And if he was going to do that, then he may as well make the most of it. And that meant...

"What would you like to do today, brother?" he asked over breakfast the next morning, gazing across the table at Thor's face, the sleep still clinging to it, the skin under his eyes sallow. Thor was scraping jam onto a slice of toast, scowling down at it. Loki’s words caused him to look up, squinting against the light.

Loki chuckled. "At least, if you are awake enough yet to make such decisions. Didn't you always used to be fond of mornings?"

Thor merely grunted in response, blond hair falling into his eyes like a curtain.

Loki waited, took a bite of one of the pastries he'd selected. Chewed it slowly while he waited yet longer.

"How about a ride in the fields?"

That seemed safe enough, familiar and easy without being overly laden with unpleasant memories for either of them, and unlikely to bring them into the company of anyone who Loki would prefer to avoid.

The notion seemed to take a moment to trickle through Thor's thoughts, but when it finally did, he rallied a little and nodded. "Yes," he said. "Let us do that."

The skies were mostly clear after the night's wet weather and the thin sunlight streaming onto the damp ground when they got out to Bilskirnir's stables, bringing with them the supplies for a picnic later and wearing thick cloaks against the first teeth of autumn chill in the wind.

In the years since his fall and during his time on Midgard, Loki had not spent much time around such beasts, and the scents of the stable—hay and horse and manure and a slight odor of apples—filled his nostrils thickly, above the broader air of wet earth and leaves. And the sounds, soft snorts and the rustling of movement.

In one of the first stalls, Thor's gray was being tended by a young stablehand, being readied with her harness and saddle.

Loki was not at all expecting the sight of his own old roan in the next stall down, nickering at him as he approached. 

He looked to Thor wonderingly. “You brought her with you when you came here?”

“She was yours,” Thor said with a shrug. “Why would I not want to take care of her for you after you’d gone?”

Loki answered with a distracted hum while letting his hand and shoulder be nuzzled. She indeed seemed very glad to see him, and the thought warmed him more than he might have expected. 

From that point it would have taken only a few moments for them to be ready, except for the little bit of trouble when Thor approached his own mount, reaching to take the leads.

For no reason Loki could discern, the horse spooked, lurching back from Thor, banging up against the back wall. Kicking out and almost clipping the young stablehand's shoulder; the boy ducked away only just in time. The gray's eyes rolled, and she gave a high, piercing shriek as Thor reached out again.

“What has gotten into you?” Thor muttered, trying again to coax his mount forward while she balked and snorted.

Loki watched, uncertain.

Thor had always been a skilled horseman, his mounts trusting him no matter what he asked of them. But they were nervous beasts, after all; it could happen to anyone. And eventually the gray did calm, and between Thor and the stablehand they managed to get her ready, and once Thor was swinging himself into the saddle it was like it had never happened.

With much less fuss, Loki brought out his roan and took his place at Thor's side, and together they rode out.

V.II

Swiftly they put the city of Asgard behind them and rode out into the fields and forests.

It was a beautiful day. Though the sky started out clear, as they traveled onward the wind turned cool enough to banish any hint of sweat from their skin. Clouds began to move in again from the horizon; arrows of sunlight canted down through it, that strange sort of light that comes through rain. And though Loki glanced over to Thor when he first noticed it, he didn’t mind the change.

Asgard overcast, lit only by what could penetrate the gloom, felt less oppressive, less the place of his most irritating memories. Less glaringly golden.

It was refreshing enough that he was even ready to make more of an effort to be brotherly, glancing over at Thor and trying to come up with something for them to speak about. Thor had wanted him back home so badly, surely he should be pleased now.

At the moment, though, he was staring off into the middle distance in silence, looking troubled.

"A coin for your thoughts, as the Midgardians say," Loki prompted, nudging his mount a little closer.

Thor tensed, startled. "What?"

"I asked what's on your mind, brother."

Thor hesitated, frowning. "I don't want it to rain today."

Loki glanced the way Thor had been looking—toward the darker part of the sky, low clouds rolling steadily toward them. "Well, then, perhaps you should not make those storms come," he answered, wry, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"I'm not trying to!"

It had been centuries since Thor had had any difficulty controlling his powers. Not since they were adolescents, and then Thor's outbursts of anger had reliably been accompanied by ruinous weather as well, over which he had felt suitably ashamed whenever he had calmed down.

Loki had not been helpful about it back then, teasing Thor or goading him depending on his own mood.

"It doesn't matter terribly much, does it?" he said now instead.

"But it does," Thor insisted, agitated. "This should have been a good day. You are finally back. I wanted everything to be perfect."

"I like this weather."

Thor's fists tightened on the reins, and the sky above growled. "I wanted everything to be right again!"

At just that moment, the first drops began to sprinkle down on their heads, and Loki rolled his eyes with a sigh. "You're doing a great job of being calm and getting the skies to obey you, brother."

When Thor did not answer even as the rain grew steadier, Loki looked over at him.

But this time, he caught only a glimpse of his miserable, frustrated expression before Thor was turning his face away with a scoff and spurring his mount faster.

Loki gritted his teeth and followed.

Thor did not slow until they were both drenched, hair plastered to their heads, rainwater dripping down their faces and their backs. And by then he was shivering, knuckles blue-white where he gripped the reins.

"I'm sorry," Thor said, voice dull, teeth chattering.

Loki, of course, was not much bothered by the chill, though he could have done without having all his clothes clinging to him in the most uncomfortable ways.

"It's all right," he said. "Let's just go back."

Thor nodded.

V.III

Far overhead, a dark black spot winged past them in a wide arc, its path zig-zagging madly, storm-tossed. It remained there as an unnoticed black speck against the grey sky for their entire ride home, and then it made its own wet way back to the windows of Gladsheim.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Day of the Dead, everybody! Thank you so much for all your responses so far--it makes it so much fun to share this story with you. Things should be heating up from here on out, and I hope you will continue to enjoy it!

VI.I

"You're half frozen. Come on."

Thor huffed a breath. “I don’t feel chilled. I feel fine.”

“Have you felt how cold your hands are? They’re freezing."

While Loki watched, Thor flexed his fingers, rubbed them together, frowning.

"Trust me. The steam will do us both good."

Thor at last acquiesced and followed.

And Loki was convinced it was indeed what they had both needed. Though the cold couldn't hurt him, the warmth still felt tremendously good, and he lounged back against the wooden slats with his eyes closed for several minutes, leaving it to Thor to ladle hissing water over the hot stones.

Surely what had happened, with Thor losing control of the skies like that, had just been the result of the strain of the last several days. A lot had happened for both of them. It was hard for Loki to get used to being here again; surely for Thor it was just as difficult an adjustment. Loki couldn't blame him for that, no matter how tempting it might be. 

As he lay there the tension seeped out of his muscles and his bones, until at last he was rolling his shoulders and changing position, opening his eyes, sitting up again—

A dark smudge on the side of Thor's leg caught his eye.

"What is that?" he asked, reaching across through the warm hazy air, expecting perhaps a smear of dirt, but it didn't come away on his fingers.

A bruise. And now that he was looking, there were more. Peppered across Thor’s arms, thighs, flank. Smaller or larger, some just a faint hint and some dark and discolored, with tiny bursts of blood beneath the skin. They looked new; on Asgardian flesh such marks would last only hours.

Loki blinked up in surprise. "How did you get these?"

Thor stared at his own skin, mouth downturned. “I’m not certain. It must have been when I sparred with Sif.”

“When was that?”

“The day before you were released from the cells, I think?" Thor answered.

Loki peered closer, studying the bruises, worry blooming inside him.

“They don’t hurt,” Thor added. “I had not noticed them.”

Loki pressed an experimental thumb to a particularly dark, mottled bruise on Thor’s bicep.

Thor hissed, pushing Loki away. “I did not say I wanted you to make them hurt!” 

Loki murmured an apology and sat back, clutching idly to one of the birch bundles merely for something to do, and he looked Thor over as best he could in brief glances, not wanting to be caught staring. 

Thor looked as healthy as ever, aside from the bruises, and it wasn’t like Loki had not seen him far worse off countless times in their lives. Thor’s ribs rose and fell with his breath, slow and even. His skin was ruddied and glowing from the warmth, with just a hint of sweat. Thor's body was as strong, as enviable, as  _ perfect _ as it had always been. More so, if anything, though Loki’s memory might have been deceiving him. 

Loki shifted where he sat and looked firmly away. The bruises surely meant nothing. 

He put them out of his mind entirely after he and Thor re-dressed and left the sauna a little while later. 

And in the days that followed he saw no other sign of anything amiss with his brother, and they settled into a routine. 

They spent the early part of the mornings together, Thor yawning and grumbling until he woke more fully. And then most days Thor would offer an apologetic mumble and excuse himself to his duties, occasionally riding off to the palace, more often merely shutting himself in his study over a pile of papers that had arrived. And Loki did not at all miss having such responsibilities. He could entertain himself quite well in wandering the grounds and feeling mildly amused by the looks the servants gave him and generally settling in. And then in the evenings, they usually wound up spending a little more time together, time spent  _ being brotherly _ and pretending that nothing had ever gone wrong between them and that they had not just spent the last several years at war. 

Thor seemed content with this state of affairs, as far as Loki could see, and Loki was surprised to find that he didn’t mind it so much either. 

VI.II

The days and weeks that followed the princes’ return brought a measure of calm after the chaos that had descended upon Bilskirnir, though the rain did continue sporadically, brief showers here and there, a few flashes of lightning, the occasional storm.

At the end of the second week, after his shift was over, Henrik sat in the kitchens where his cousin worked and begged off her some of the day’s scraps, and meanwhile listened to the other servants' gossip.

Everyone, it seemed, had come to the same conclusion. Loki's presence was strange and unsettling, but so far, there had been no sign of evil intentions from him.

There seemed to be some tension between the princes but no real cause for alarm. It was much like one would expect for a reunion after years of estrangement and strife.

There were some who insisted that they would not put it past Loki to simply be drawing out his deceit, waiting until he had created an illusion of innocence before he struck. To which others replied that, given his reputation, removing all suspicion from himself would take a very long time indeed, and thus he would surely not bother.

Henrik shrugged away both suggestions.

"So why do  _ you _ think he's come back, then?" his cousin asked, while she kneaded the next day's bread.

"I haven't the slightest idea. But it's probably not whatever we think it is. He's too clever for that. So what I mean to do is just keep my eyes open and hope for the best."

His cousin considered this and allowed that he might be right, and soon after the conversation turned instead to the upcoming High Feast of the realm, only days away.

VI.III

After days of sporadic rain, the training ground of Bilskirnir was two inches of mud, despite the roof on its standing posts, the shields lashed together forming its shingles. The rain had come down slantwise, and it had run and gathered into puddles, and it had dripped down from the crevices.

And as evening came on, a brisk wind whistling down out of the darkening sky, almost no one—even those hardy enough to count themselves among Thor's own warriors—would have cared to be there.

Except, perhaps, for a young man like Halvor, only recently joined the company and eager to prove himself, who had stayed to work through drills on his own until he could bear no more.

He had near reached that point when a new silhouette appeared at the edge of the covered yard: Thor himself, striding across that space. Halvor was almost too in awe to accept the rumbled offer to spar with him.

Later he would come to think of that as his mistake. Saying yes in the first place. Not thinking it through. Being too inexperienced to see the obvious danger—the footing in the deep mud adequate for solo drills taken at a careful pace, but far too treacherous for him to face one such as the prince of the realm.

And the rain and wind were picking up, turning into an endless din against the high tiles. The sky all around was flashing white. Echoes and rumbling filled the night so that he could barely hear his own thoughts, and it made it too hard to think, too hard to realize that something was peculiar as they began, Thor advancing on him yet barely seeming to acknowledge him. And then they began, and Halvor was parrying a first strike that was much harder than he had been expecting.

There was something  _ distant  _ about the way the Odinson fought him. Halvor had never been in battle, and this  wasn't  at all what he thought it would be like. There was no heat to this. Instead, it felt like being battered back by something that did not care what he did at all but simply kept coming. The prince's eyes were empty in the dark, his face blank. Like he was seeing something else entirely.

Halvor later could never define how it had happened. How his practice sword ended up in the mud and his wrist ended up in Thor's grasp behind his back, being twisted as he was wrestled down to utter defeat.

He was sure the prince simply could not hear his scream as his footing slipped. The same way he could not hear—but could certainly feel—the snap in his shoulder as he went down hard and Thor's grip held steady as iron.

It was over the next moment anyway, as that grip let go and he sank the rest of the way to his knees in the mud, groaning at the feel of grinding bone. A wave of nausea hit him and everything went grey, the sweat cold on his brow.

There was another flash of lightning as he turned his face up, and the prince was staring down at him, mouth slack with shock.

A minute later, Halvor was on his feet, dizzy and weak, and he was actually glad that he was alone once more. The rush of fear was fading, and he was sure it had all been no more than an accident.

He hobbled away toward the resident healer, clutching his useless arm to his chest.


	7. Chapter 7

VII.I

That night, when Loki ventured over to Thor's chambers to have what had become their habitual evening drink together, he rapped on the door and announced himself but did not wait for the answer before traipsing inside. And once within, he glanced down and could only chuckle at the sight of muddy bootprints tracing the path he had to follow to find his brother.

"By the Norns, Thor, what have you been doing outside?" he called as he went.

But he found Thor sitting huddled over himself, head in his hands, his hair a damp and tangled mess shadowing his face. The mud covered his trousers to the knees and it was splattered elsewhere as well.

From what little of his flesh Loki could see, he looked pale, wan.

"Thor?"

At the sound of his voice, Thor's head lifted. His eyes were rimmed in red, but his mouth was a thin line, distraught but held in check.

"Thor, what happened?" Loki asked, rushing closer.

Thor took a breath and then another, and he shook his head, almost a twitch. "I needed distraction. I went out to the training yard."

"In this weather?"

Thor shrugged. "Why does it matter? It's just water. But there was someone out there already, and I asked to spar with him, but then when we began... I couldn't stop thinking about it."

Loki frowned. "About what?"

Thor shook his head again, and Loki waited.

"Thor?"

"Why did you make me fight you?" Thor demanded through clenched teeth.

Loki stiffened, flushed hot. "What are you talking about?"

"On Midgard. And before that. Everything." A wet drop fell onto Thor's knee, and he breathed heavily. "I cannot stop remembering it, even now that you’re home. I can’t..."

Loki felt himself tensing all over. Thor wanted to know why Loki had fought him? He wanted to speak about _that_ , as if Loki had not already told him countless times, while he pouted and begged and refused to comprehend? Loki wanted to answer now with anger—with _truth_.

But as Thor gazed up at him, eyes bright with hurt… Loki’s throat felt tight, and he couldn’t force out a word. He couldn’t say any of it while Thor sat there weeping at him.

"I just want to know why," Thor said, his voice still strained and thin.

Loki shook his head. "No, you don't."

"I do. I want to know why you…" Thor's words trailed off into a choked breath, and a little unsteadily, he got to his feet, turning upon Loki a look that he could not read. And then reached for him, mud-specked hands going toward Loki’s throat 

Loki flinched back, uncertain if he was about to be throttled.

But what happened was that Thor rested his hands on Loki’s shoulders, nervous, as if trying to remember the way he had so often touched his brother, and tugged him near.

Loki gazed at his brother’s face, uncertain, but Thor was not meeting his gaze, eyes instead running across Loki’s cheeks, his mouth, his throat, like he was searching for something there. His fingers tightened, caressed, feeling him like a blind man. His thumb passed over Loki’s pulse point and Loki was aware of the rhythm of it speeding, and the answering tremor in Thor’s hands. One soft fingertip brushed against his jaw.

The touch felt—intimate. Enough that Loki thought he ought to pull away. Like something was happening between them that he didn't understand.

"Brother," Thor sighed, pleading, soft, as he pulled Loki closer still, and Loki did not know why, did not know what Thor intended.

Driven by the tangle of fear within him and the wild thumping of his heart, he slipped back, out of his brother’s grasp.

"I will see you on the morrow," he said as he fled.

VII.II

Loki lay awake for hours, anxiety eating at him, curled around the acid feeling in his belly and listening for any sounds from the other side of the wall.

He could not stop thinking of the way Thor had gazed at him, hoping, searching, wanting—something.

It was not the first time. He has seen that look many times upon Midgard but he had always dismissed it, refusing to wonder what Thor meant by it. Refusing to give his brother any more space in his mind than he already had. But now, the sensation of Thor’s hands upon him lingered, and he lay there feeling suddenly that he should rush back into Thor’s room and speak to him, though he did not know what he would say. Unknown words were on the tip of his tongue as he envisioned it. Perhaps an apology for—for fighting Thor, for years of hating him, and just now for running away.

The very notion was ridiculous, of course.

Yet sleep would not come, only awareness of the silence and his own breathing. Little aches and twinges keeping slumber far from him, forcing his mind to retrace the past weeks and all the things that had happened. Things he had ignored at the time. Thor’s outbursts. Anger and distraction and tears.

And _that look_. Thor had looked at him that way... during their last battle upon Midgard. It was what had driven Loki to plunge his blade into Thor’s chest. That look, and the way it made him feel. Helpless and furious and lost.

Loki shut his eyes, trying his hardest not to think of it. 

But as he lay there unsettled in the dark, he began to wonder if something might be wrong with Thor.

VII.III

All looked brighter by morning—by the time Loki was actually waking to it, yawning and stretching in a light far past sunrise. Particularly as he woke to the knock on his door and Thor entering, looking as if last night had never happened.

At least, Thor seemed troubled in an entirely different and less worrisome way as he paced at the foot of Loki's bed.

"You are going to come with me, aren't you?" Thor asked, fidgeting like a child. "It is getting late in the day. All the household is readied, but I only now realized you had not said you would attend."

Loki rubbed his eyes, shoving back the blankets and shrugging on a robe. "Attend what?"

"It's the last day of Haustmánaður," Thor answered simply, as if that explained everything. Though of course when Loki remembered, it did.

It had been a long time since he had thought of it, the High Feast, one of the more elaborate of Asgard's celebrations, of which there were plenty. It had been part of the background of life, at least from the time he was old enough to be kept up late into the night listening to the recitations in the great hall while the feast went on, with what seemed the entire city in the crowd below.

It would mean returning to the palace, of course, with all that entailed.

But Loki had no intention of seeming too cowardly to show his face there.

"Mm," he said. "Yes, I'll attend. Why would I not?"


	8. Chapter 8

VIII.

In the great hall, firelight glinted on bronze and leather as the voice of a single skald cut through the air. The space was full to its most distant reaches, feasting occurring as far as the eye could see, yet it was as hushed as such a crowd could ever be expected to remain, and the voice amplified by magic so that even at the far walls, those in attendance could hear it as if the woman were speaking right at their table, her husky voice pitched low and resonant.

Lost in the shadows above, dim figures moved about in the gallery, watching over them all. Odin was surely among those figures, along with all the other high gods—except for him and Thor.

They had begun the night there; there had been little choice about that, and Loki had set his jaw in anticipation of the trial. They had gone to make their bow before the Allfather, to receive his welcome.

(Loki proved unable to resist a little smirk as he did so, but Odin had not risen to it, ignoring the deliberate insult and giving him just a nod in response. Loki had to quash his disappointment.)

Seated beside Odin was Frigga, and Loki known she would be, but he had not considered the fact.

He gave her a bow likewise. "Mother," he said, voice caught in his throat.

She smiled back at him, a little sadly. "Two weeks and you have not come to see me, Loki?"

He had not. But—and the thought stung, itched—neither had she come to see him when he was in a dungeon cell for four days. No matter that Odin claimed she had spent that time arguing on his behalf. She could look at him now, smiling, and oh-so gently blame him for his absence when she had not done anything herself to amend it.

Stiffly, he returned her smile, feeling cold inside. "I'm sorry. It is good to see you now anyway."

Another sad twitch of her lips. “It is. And I am pleased to know that you and your brother have made peace. He never gave up hope that you would.”

The feeling of cold was like ice melting and dribbling down his spine, and Loki was glad a moment later, giving her another hasty bow, when she nodded and let him move on.

There were others to occupy himself with in that moment anyway. Tyr, eyeing him with uncloaked distrust from the other end of the high table, and Loki did not bother to greet him. Freyja, who gazed at him and at his brother for far too long, and with too much interest, as if waiting for a story to unfold. Bragi, wetting his throat after a turn upon the speaker's dais, whose eyes bulged with alarm over the rim of his glass at the sight of him.

"So where shall we sit, brother?" Loki asked, already resigning himself to a very long and unpleasant night.

But Thor beside him was eyeing the high table as well, uncertain. "I think I would like to find a place down among the people this year," he murmured.

Loki tilted his head to look at him.

"I don't think I would enjoy the celebration up here. I’m in no mood for conversation. I would rather simply listen."

Thor said it unconvincingly, with a hesitant grin as he sought Loki’s eyes, but Loki was willing to accept the lie. If Thor meant to make him comfortable, he would not complain.

“Very well. Let us go, then."

VIII.II

They chose a place in a corner of the hall near the front, at an empty table, and no one else ventured near. Loki was not sure whether that was due to their royal status or because of his own presence. Even Thor’s usually ubiquitous friends were nowhere to be seen. These things together meant that they were alone amidst the crowd, a sensation of invisibility coming over Loki as the evening went on.

Loki sat and picked at the food in the laden trencher before him and wrapped his fingers around a full mug of ale, nursing it as the hours passed. And he glanced now and then at his brother beside him. Thor had been cheerful all the way from Bilskirnir, riding slowly with most of the household traipsing along on foot all around them. And his cheer still held, it seemed, as he listened with a vague smile on his lips.

To himself, Loki shrugged as the voice of the skald droned on, and his mind wandered. He leaned to prop a foot on the bench beside him.

Tales of ancient war and destruction, Aesir and Vanir and all the deaths at each other's hands before the truce and the exchange. He’d heard it all hundreds of times. He probably ought to have known these tales by rote. Loki yawned and tilted his head back, paying the recitations little attention.

High in the black rafters he caught a flutter of shadowy motion, and he was just able to make out the course of a dark, flitting, winged shape before it swooped across to alight on some perch in the gallery.

Loki smirked to himself. Of course Odin would be watching, but he would surely not see anything  amiss.

Loki turned to glance again at Thor—

The smile was gone, and instead Thor’s brow was weighted, troubled. His eyes hazy and unfocused.

The skald’s voice filled the air, and Loki recognized this part of the tales.

_… warrior’s death, betrayed by kinsman. Held fast in the earth’s cold embrace…_

Thor’s chest heaved with breath, and his face had gone pale, even in that fire-lit place. Tentatively, Loki reached out to touch his arm, and Thor blinked.

“Thor,” Loki whispered.

Thor stared back at him, eyes wide.

“Thor, are you all right?”

Thor nodded but said nothing.

A few moments later, the noise of the room around them grew as the skald ceased the recitation to give the gathered folk another opportunity to refresh themselves or stretch their legs, and Thor was one of those who stood, pushing himself to his feet.

When Loki called after him, he muttered something that Loki could not make out and waved him away, hand batting at the air, and Loki assumed a call of nature as he watched Thor disappear into the crowd milling away toward the many exits.

VIII.III

Thor was still gone when the skald began to recite again, the hush falling once more over the massive room, and Loki craned his neck to watch the doorway through which Thor had disappeared.

Minutes passed. _This battle, that victory_.

Loki gripped white-knuckled to his mug, telling himself he was not worried, telling himself he was not thinking of the night before, all his fears and suspicions.

The voice hummed on. _That warrior's fall. That revenge._

He glanced again up at the darkness of the rafters and the shadowy shapes in the gallery, and with a murmur he drew down a seeming over himself, a Loki-shaped illusion that would continue to eat and drink and tilt its head in boredom after he sneaked away.

Outside the vast main hall, there were corridors and passageways dotted with the doors to smaller chambers. Supply rooms and stores and kitchens, staircases leading to the upper galleries. Balconies open to the air and covered walkways leading to the guard towers arrayed at the points of each wall.

Loki hurried along almost all of them—his footsteps tapping softly on the stone of the floor, his heart thumping erratic in his chest though surely he was worrying over nothing, and how were there this many corridors down which to look?—meeting others only once or twice, and then only servants with eyes downcast as soon as he appeared, keeping close to the wall and out of his way.

He almost did not check down the last corridor, leading as it did only to one of those guard towers, and there was no one visible in the light of the dimmed sconces.

The sconce at the very end of the hall had been extinguished, though, and it almost looked like there was a shape upon the ground there in the shadows.

Loki approached, lighting a flame to leap before him to illuminate his way.

It glinted off silver armor, dented in. It shimmered on a dark wetness on the floor.

Loki had to crouch to get a good look at the man. The guard’s nose was broken, smashed flat against his skull, face red and violet and unrecognizable.

His helmet, knocked a few feet away on the flagstones, bore the undeniable dent of a hammer-strike.

Breath caught in his throat, Loki cast a quick spell, sending the body into the sea to flow over the edge into the void. And another, to wipe away the ruddy stain.

As he straightened again, he felt a presence behind him. Quickly he spun. And then Loki stared at his brother, who was merely standing there, half concealed in the guard-tower doorway, with the red-splattered weapon dangling limply in his grasp.

“What happened?” Loki demanded, eyes wide.

Thor looked down at Mjolnir in his hand and then back at Loki. “He disrespected me,” Thor said, but his voice wavered, weak, uncertain, and he frowned at his own words.

It should have been a simple task for Loki Silvertongue to answer that, to say something to cut through the panic he could see growing in Thor’s face, but it wasn’t. He was too confused himself.

“It’s all right, Thor.” Platitudes, empty reassurances, voice thin in his ears. “You must have had good reason. I know you did.”

This did not have the desired effect. Thor’s face twisted in ugly misery. “No. Everything is wrong."

"Yes, I know, and it's not your fault, brother. The guard obviously provoked you. It's all right."

The muscles in Thor's arm—the arm holding Mjolnir low at his side—squirmed and twitched. "But it is all wrong," he repeated, plaintive.

Loki forced himself to step forward, snaking an arm around his brother's shoulders, comforting. He made his voice warm and reassuring. "You're not well, but I will take you home and you will feel better then. Let's go home."

After a moment of trembling tension, Thor's entire frame sagged, and Loki sighed relief.

They would be missed at the feast, perhaps. If they were very unlucky, someone would recall that they were missed at just the same time that the guard disappeared from his post. But that was just a chance they would have to take, for Loki was not bringing Thor back there as he was now.

Thor nodded, head low, and Loki led the way.


	9. Chapter 9

IX.I

Henrik was one of the few who did not leave with the rest of the household for the celebrations. He had a distaste for such large crowds, the press of bodies, the heat and odors, and he greatly preferred a quiet remembrance in his own fashion while Bilskirnir was hushed and empty and peaceful.

So he was having a cup of tea at the table in the kitchens when he heard it, the sound of a creaking door and far-off footsteps, out of place in that midnight silence.

A lantern in his hand, he trod cautiously down the darkened corridor whence the sound seemed to have come, wondering who else would not be at the celebrations or else already in their beds. Who would be entering Bilskirnir from the back doorway near the stables at such an hour.

When he came to the door at the end of the hallway, hearing faint noises beyond it, he eased the door open an inch, just enough…

“My lords?" he said in confusion. "You’re… you’re home?”

Henrik stared at them, the two tall, regal figures in the shadowy space, Loki with his dark head bent near to his brother as if soothing him with some whispered words, and Thor swaying slightly where he stood. Henrik's mind picked up on other details as well. The mud splattered on the bottom hems of their garments, as if they had ridden across the fields rather than taking the roads. The jolt that passed through Loki at the sound of Henrik's voice, quickly smoothing away as he turned with a thin-lipped smile.

“My brother took ill,” he said. “Overindulgence, most likely—would you go fetch a piece of burnt toast from the kitchens for him so he won’t feel even worse on the morrow?”

Henrik looked past him to gaze upon Thor again. He did indeed look unwell, face splotched as if from wind or exertion, his eyes dazed and sunk in sallow shadows. His hands hung at his sides, and there was rust-red dirt under his nails, matching the stains on the filthy rag that Loki held.

Loki cleared his throat, and his eyes were sharp.

Henrik nodded and rushed off to do as he'd been bidden.

By the time he returned with the blackened bread, they were both cleaned up, and Thor seemed somewhat recovered—enough to give a bleary nod as he took the plate.

“Is there anything else I can do?” Henrik asked, hovering.

Oddly, Thor looked up at his brother as if he was unsure of the answer himself. But Loki shook his head firmly and was a moment later ushering Henrik out with hurried thanks, closing the door almost before he was through it.

IX.II

Loki feigned calm as he got his brother cleaned up.

Once home, Thor had indeed quickly subsided, his agitation fading away until he merely let himself be guided, meek and docile.

But Loki could not deny it any longer, could no longer brush the thought aside and close his eyes.

Something was wrong with his brother.

Thor had always been prone to fits of temper. He had often indulged in destruction. But this... this had not been like that. Loki saw the guard's smashed face in his mind's eye and shuddered as he cleaned the blood out from under Thor's fingernails, scraping it away while Thor gazed down, blinking, as if he did not understand its significance.

Something was wrong. But Loki was at a loss for what or why or how to fix it.

"Do you feel better, brother?" Loki asked when he had finished, having cleaned off all the mud and blood and helped Thor into his nightshirt and nudged him gently toward the bed, hoping that rest would at least be good for him.

Thor considered this as he lay there clutching the edge of the blankets that Loki had drawn up over him. "Are you going to leave now?"

Loki tilted his head, shrugged. "Just to my own chambers."

Thor frowned and shook his head.

"Thor, I'll be right on the other side of that wall.”

Loki needed time to think. He wanted to consult a few of the books he'd reclaimed from among his old possessions, sorcery treatises that might have some answers for what could be causing the changes in Thor's behavior. He needed to steady himself and get a handle on this.

The shake of Thor's head this time was jerky, nervous. "No. Stay here. Please." And his eyes were on Loki as if he held the only reassurance Thor would ever need.

With a warm spark fighting against the unsettled, queasy feeling in his belly, Loki allowed himself to be convinced to stay.

Thor fell asleep almost at once, with a soft wordless murmur as he closed his eyes, and Loki took a position on the chaise on the other side of the room, trying to get some rest and hoping that somehow all the answers he needed would come clear in the morning.

IX.III

It was still night when Loki was awoken by a muffled thump.

Jolted from sleep, blinking muzzily in the dark—and the thump was followed by the sound of a low cry and a groan, and by then Loki had oriented himself enough to understand what was happening.

Bare feet on cold floor, and his hands on Thor's shoulders, trying to pull him out of the nightmare.

"Nnnn—" Thor groaned and gasped, clenching his teeth, jerking his head back as if to escape a blow. Blond hair fanning out around his head as he twitched and squirmed.

"Thor, wake up!"

Thor didn’t. In his sleep, he moaned and pulled away. His lips moved as if he were speaking. His eyes squeezed tight.

Loki nudged him again, harder.

Then Thor’s eyes snapped open, and fast as lightning his hand sealed around Loki’s wrist.

Instinctively Loki tugged back at it and found him as immovable as his hammer.

“Thor,” Loki said as the bones of his wrist creaked. The blue of Thor's eyes was black in the darkness, staring through him. "Thor," Loki repeated, like a plea.

A few heartbeats passed before Thor blinked and let go. “Loki.”

“You were dreaming,” Loki explained.

Thor's breathing quickened as his gaze dropped to Loki's wrist. "I'm sorry.”

"It's all right. Just go back to sleep, brother. Don't worry. It’s all right."

Thor nodded, and soon enough he closed his eyes. 

For Loki, sleep was farther away the second time, and when Thor had drifted off again, he paced the room, on edge.

Something was wrong, and he knew not what.

On silent feet he crept close to Thor’s bedside, standing over his sleeping form, gazing down at him. Loki frowned and carefully, cautiously probed at his brother with a few tendrils of magic. Trying to feel for anything out of place, anything broken. A magical ailment of some kind, an unnoticed binding dragging upon him. Anything of the sort.

Or any hint that it was his own spell that had somehow…  

Nothing, nothing appeared to his searching eyes. But Thor stirred and whimpered in his sleep and turned away, and as he did so the nightshirt and blankets slipped down, revealing part of his shoulder, the muscles of his back. The perfect way they moved together as he shifted his arm, soft in the faint pale light sneaking in through the window. Loki’s hand twitched—he wanted to reach down to smooth the nightshirt back into place… or just to touch…

Loki felt his face heating for no reason he could discern, and he retreated to the chaise, lying down and trying to ignore the tight-clenched worry in the depths of his stomach and the racing of his heart.


	10. Chapter 10

X.I

Loki awoke that morning from unremembered dreams, the chaotic images fading swiftly as wakefulness set in.

Thor still slumbered—peacefully, his face sweetly slack against the pillow—and it seemed safe enough to leave him to it. But hunger rumbled in Loki's belly, and for himself he had to slip away to seek some breakfast.

He was just passing the front hall when he heard the knocking, and the creak of the hinges as the servants opened the door to the visitor.

Fright struck him for a moment—the feast they had left so hastily, and the guard whose body was by then either a bloated buoy riding the crest of the waters or a frozen speck floating in emptiness—and Loki gripped the edge of the doorway, listening.

A minute later, he was standing face to face with Sif, who glanced around, wary and uncertain. He forced himself to give her a little grin.

“He’s still asleep,” Loki said, tilting his head.

Sif looked yet more uncomfortable. “It’s you I’ve come to speak with.”

That should have worried him even more; he could not recall the last time Sif had chosen to speak with him of her own volition, except when she suspected him of mischief or—even longer ago—when they were both trying to feign friendship for Thor's sake.

Chances were that this time she had been sent, or had found some reason to believe he was at fault for something... but the look on her face was one of swallowed pride, trying to make herself look small, unthreatening. Deferential.

Loki had never seen her do that before, she who had always bristled to make herself look larger, who wore armor a size too big with extra padding when she was just a girl trying to impress the men with her determination and ferocity. Right now she had the look of someone asking a favor from an enemy, and Loki could not imagine what she wanted from him.

She wrung her hands. “What is wrong with Thor?”

Loki's false smile fell. “And what makes you believe that something is wrong with Thor?”

Sif shoved her hair back behind her ear, an old nervous gesture, and her eyes flickered toward the far doorway before she began, and when she first spoke her voice cracked, as if speaking ill of the thunder god was almost physically impossible for her.

"I have seen him only a little since his return, yet I feel every time we meet... Loki, something is different about him. He is not himself." She frowned in thought, a delicate fold forming between her brows "He is... distracted. And more easily angered than I have ever seen him before, and then it passes and it is like he doesn't realize anything has happened at all. At first I thought he was merely weary." Sif paused again, biting her lip. "But it's only growing worse."

She stood there, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, waiting for him to reply, and Loki took in the sight of her.

Hearing her voice the same thoughts that had passed through his mind was unsettling.

“And why are you asking me?”

A frustrated huff of breath, and that was more like the Sif he knew. “Loki, if something has happened… if there is something I might do to help… I would beg you to tell me. I do not care who is to blame. I only care about him. Please.”

Loki’s voice stuck in his throat. “I know of nothing that might be causing what you describe.”

She looked dubious, pushed a straggle of dark locks back from her brow again. “Promise me, Loki, that you will come to me if there is any way that I can help him. Or help you to help him.”

Loki nodded, unsure what else to do.

And then, her intention evidently achieved, she departed.

X.II

Sif left even more worried, fingertips pressed to her mouth, biting at them in the most nervous moments.

When she had arrived at Bilskirnir, she suspected deep down that Loki had enchanted Thor somehow—that he was doing something to Thor out of the same malice that had long been in the trickster’s heart, that he had connived his way back to Asgard on the strength of his brother’s old love for him only to betray that love yet again. And though she had forced her face into a mask of conciliation, she had almost hoped to be proven right and that it would come down to the steel of her sword to save her friend.

That would have been infinitely simpler.

It was not doubt that Sif felt as she strode away from Thor’s hall under a sky outlined in clouds—it was certainty. Loki had said far too little, accepted her demand that he make promises to her far too easily.

There was definitely something wrong with Thor, and Loki knew it as well as she did.

But Sif had only just then become certain that Loki was not the cause. He was not controlling Thor’s will or poisoning his unconscious mind with sorcery, because Loki too was afraid.

It brought out old memories, things she had long since dismissed as shadows, but she could not deny that there was a time when Loki looked upon his brother with nothing but adoration in his eyes, even though he had tried to hide it, and it had stayed even when the jealousy appeared. She had known, even as a child, that Loki loved his brother. And she was reminded of it now. And she did not know what to do, for right now Loki was terrified, such that Sif could almost feel that he  _ knew _ something, knew more than anyone else did about what had befallen Thor. And while Loki was untrustworthy and dishonorable and villainous, he was also clever and as cunning a creature as had ever walked in Asgard.

And all of that together meant there was some small chance that whatever had happened, Loki was the only one who could help Thor now.

That small chance would be gone if she went to the Allfather or the Queen and spoke to them her fears. If Loki knew something, being confronted would never pry it from his lips, no matter the threat, no matter the force. And if he were hauled away in chains…

There was some small chance that Sif’s silence could save Thor from whatever it was that threatened him. As long as she was not wrong. As long as Loki could actually help. As long as he actually would.

The clouds above began to grumble, and rain began to patter down as Sif rushed homeward, stricken with indecision.

X.III

Loki was unsettled after she departed, and he wandered Bilskirnir for an hour afterward in thought before heading back to Thor’s bedchamber.

When he slipped within, he found Thor still asleep, sprawled out on the bed, one hand flung above his head wrapped around a fur it had found draped there and the other folded across his belly; a few bruises were still visible upon his flesh. His chin was tilted back and he breathed in long, deep cycles, chest rising and falling, a spear of golden sunlight alighting just upon the center of his chest where the covers had slipped down.

Loki studied the sight.

And he thought of a simple enough way to fix all of this, even if he couldn't discern what the problem was.

So he perched by the side of the bed, brushed back a curl of blond with his fingertips, his heart fluttering, oddly struck by Thor's beauty, unblemished by the slight sallow tinge to the skin around his eyes. By this point in their lives, he ought to have been used to it, should have long been over his envy. Yet he wasn’t.

“Brother,” he said, just above a whisper.

Slowly, Thor’s eyes blinked open. The lids slid back, the pupils beneath wide and unfocused and blank, and Loki had the strangest feeling that Thor did not recognize him. But after a moment, Thor groaned.

“What?”

“I’m going out,” Loki told him. “I didn’t want you to worry. Or think that I’d disappeared.”

There was supposed to be some humor in this remark, but by Thor’s look Loki suspected the effect was lost on him. When Thor did not answer at all, Loki pursed his lips, let his hand fall at last from the edge of the bed, straightened to his feet.

“I won’t be gone long.”

Loki promised that and then departed, feeling Thor’s eyes following him.


	11. Chapter 11

XI.I

The streets of Asgard were near empty, for the day after the High Feast was a holiday, with everyone recuperating and enjoying the quiet and the rest. In a way, Loki supposed, this was fortunate, for it meant there was nothing to impede his progress, no crowds or morning markets or other menial business to get in his way.

On the other hand, it also meant that he felt exposed as he made his way to his destination, even though he walked in shadows of his own making, unseen to any but the most diligent. It was simply from the strangeness of seeing those damp roads silent and bare and grey, mists rising slowly off them, as if the city were abandoned. But Loki refused to dwell on his own uneasiness. Instead he gathered himself for what he meant to do, and eventually he reached his destination.

Just within the city walls to the south, where mild breezes blew year-round, there was an apple orchard, tended by one goddess only.

Within it, golden apples hung heavy, few, and precious on green boughs amid the perfumed air, plucked only at the perfect ripeness, rationed out only to those who needed and deserved, consumed only with gratitude and reverence.

The grove itself was not guarded, though, for thievery would be impossible. When picked by any hand but Idunn’s, the apples lost their virtue; their sweet flesh turned brown and their magic failed. So Loki was easily able to slip through the hedge that served as a fence and stroll under the leaves, the scent of apple blossoms filling the air though the flowers themselves had long since fallen.

In that place, it was spring and summer and harvest at once, but never winter, never the dying season. In that place, even the dark clouds above bore no menace, only rain.

The apples could not be picked by anyone else’s hand.

Loki long ago tested whether it was the appearance of the goddess that mattered, shifting his own form to hers for long enough to taste—no, of course, it had not worked. Nor had plucking them with no hand at all. But there was another way that would not require bargains he did not want to make and explanations he did not want to give.

He found the goddess down one shaded row—humming as she worked—and he stalked behind her like a ghost. She noticed nothing. Her hand placed an apple in her half-filled basket, and her golden hair flowed down her back as she stood on the tips of her toes to reach for another.

Shortly afterward, Loki darted away again, a single golden apple, ripe and perfect, bulging in his pocket.

No matter what was wrong with Thor, it would restore him. That thought was a comfort in Loki's mind, and he traipsed back into Bilskirnir grinning with the swell of anticipated success.

"Thor!" he called when he reached his brother's chambers, but no answer came from within.

When Loki hesitantly pushed open the door a moment later, he found the place quiet and empty, the bedclothes rumpled but cold.

Loki frowned at the delay but peered out again, searching through the other likely places in the massive residence and finding Thor in none of them.

Nor did the servants he questioned have any idea where Thor had gone.

In the end, Loki took a breath and gave a mental shrug, and he returned to Thor's chambers.

He wanted Thor to have it as soon as he returned, even if he somehow managed to slip by Loki's watch, so he left the apple on Thor’s desk, with a note beneath it.

_“This is for you. Before you ask, yes, I stole it. ~L.”_

Loki smiled as he left it. This would all be mended soon.

XI.II

Two hours later, Loki stroked a hand across his brother's back, dread rushing in waves down his own spine.

Thor's body was aflame, sweat damp on his skin as he retched over the basin.

He heaved and moaned, and Loki's fingers carefully held damp blond strands out of the way, gathered it into a knot at his nape, and he murmured soothing sounds without words, avoiding the sight of yellow bile that gradually filled the basin, flecked with bits of brown.

He had come when he heard muffled sounds from the other side of the wall, and right away he had spotted the discarded, tooth-bitten apple core lying on the floor by Thor's desk, and his brother on his knees, body bowed in a posture of wretched illness, muscles squirming under the skin of Thor's broad back while his stomach clenched involuntarily.

Cold horror had welled up inside Loki then, like a scream, and he hurried over to help.

It took a long time for the retching to stop, until there was surely not so much as a trace of the apple left in his system, and Thor remained curled over painfully, thick saliva drooling from his mouth as he tried to spit the taste away. Wet, rasping coughs as he tried to clear his throat. His eyes were red, bloodshot, and they watered until he almost seemed to be weeping, lashes clumped together as he blinked and shuddered.

“What is happening to me?” Thor groaned, miserable, when he at last sat back.

Loki racked his brain for something that would mean this was not the disaster it seemed to be.

“You were long on Midgard,” he ventured after too lengthy a pause. “Perhaps it has affected you somehow.”

Thor gave him a dubious look. But once he said it, Loki found that it sounded not so far-fetched.

“You were there just as long,” Thor answered with a scowl.

A tense smile. “I’m not Aesir."

Thor made no reply to this as he wiped his mouth and pushed the basin away. He took a few heavy breaths, collecting himself.  “Do you really believe that could be why? If it is… why has it never happened to anyone else? Odin spent years upon the mortal realm long ago.” Thor looked to his brother, searching his face. But Loki was not quick enough to reply and Thor went on, still shivering with sickness. “I must ask him. Perhaps he will know of a cure.”

“No,” Loki said sharply, a hand up to halt the suggestion. "No, don't. Not yet. Let me try to help you."

Thor frowned, and Loki grinned at him, nudged him gently. Stroked his shoulder in a brotherly gesture.

"You have scolded me for the many times I betrayed you. Let me now make it up to you. Let Loki heal you.”

Thor bit at his lip, wavering. Gazed at Loki, uncertain. “What must I do?”

And Loki’s mind raced. He bought himself time by standing and going to the pitcher on Thor’s table, pouring a cup of cool water for him. Thor accepted it and sipped at it gratefully while Loki thought.

He was not particularly experienced at healing magic, but he was a master sorcerer and that meant his skill was perfectly adequate. What he required was knowledge, which at least he knew where to find.

“Let me get back to you on that.”

XI.III

Helga, a librarian in the city's archives, was trying to believe her own senses, because she was fairly certain that Loki—the realm's fallen prince turned villain, who had so recently returned under mysterious circumstances—was perched over a growing stack of books in the dustiest back corner of her section of the building.

It was a little hard to focus on him when she looked, and the lights of the lamps in that area seemed dim, making her squint when she tried, but she was almost certain it was indeed he. If it was not, it was someone who looked just like him, muttering to himself and flipping through pages as if he held a grudge against them. The books he inspected wound up in one of two piles, to the left and right of his feet. The one on the right was much larger.

And that particular shelf—esoteric treatises on a few little-practiced varieties of magic, mostly old and some greatly outdated. She rarely had to tidy up anything there, as those books were hardly ever consulted.

When she noticed his eyes peering back at her, she realized she'd been staring, and she looked away almost involuntarily. But it had not put him off. He went right back to ignoring her.

A little while later, she realized that no one was in the space she was gazing at, though for some reason she had expected there to be.

What there was, instead, was a mess. Two piles of books, one small and one large. Her brow twisted in perplexity as she stooped to pick them up. Titles on rare types of healing magic. Collections of essays describing how to restore a sapped godly essence. She felt a flash of annoyance—one of the books had even been left lying open, creasing the spine, on a page with a full-color plate of the pool of Hvergelmir under its domed roof of stars.


	12. Chapter 12

XII.I

They made the attempt that night, in Loki’s chambers.

Loki had set out the bowl and knife and brush, and the little vial of water he had collected from the sacred spring, and he set down two cushions on the floor, and Thor eyed each of these items warily as he entered. But he obeyed without complaint Loki’s order to remove his vestments and kneel on one of the cushions.

Loki tried to watch him do so, as surreptitiously as he could.

There were new bruises, darker ones, of mysterious origin, and an unusual pallor to his skin. But more than that, Thor stripped off his clothes a little self-consciously, and it made Loki aware of himself, his own nervousness, his own fears.

He felt a strange craving to touch Thor's bruises, and it was almost like the way it had felt, for years, wanting only to hurt him. Wanting to fight him, defeat him, destroy him.

Loki swallowed, picked up the knife to have something to occupy his hands.

“What do you mean to do to me?” Thor asked, smiling weakly and eyeing the blade, as at last he knelt down where he was told, thighs delicately together, back straight, shoulders broad. Head high.

Loki did not answer, not trusting his voice in that moment. Instead he grabbed Thor’s hand, holding it palm-up over the bowl on the floor between them, and he made a quick, sharp cut. No matter Thor’s reputation for hardiness against pain, it was odd to see him glance down in surprise at the trickling, splashing sound. Odd to see his eyes widen at the blood welling up out of the wound and dripping down the side of his hand, vividly red, as if he had not known he was cut.

When there was enough, Loki tied a dark bandage around it; he would heal it properly when the spell was done, but meanwhile the wound was necessary. It had to stay.

Then from the vial that held the precious waters he poured a brief stream to join the blood in the bowl, and the blood was not diluted but deepened in color as it all swirled together.

Loki dipped the fine bristles of the brush, coating them in brilliant crimson.

"Now stay still, brother."

Thor obeyed, and Loki began to paint the multitude of runes of the spell onto his skin. Slowly they covered his arms, his legs, his chest, his back. Loki swept aside Thor’s hair to trace along the line of his shoulder from behind, keeping it gathered there with a light touch to the nape of Thor’s neck.

Thor was shivering beneath his hand, and Loki could feel his own heartbeat in his chest, thumping against his ribs.

When he returned to Thor’s front, the look on his brother’s face was one of longing, need. Thor, marked with blood and marred with bruises and ordered into stillness, attended to Loki’s every tiniest action.

Loki did not know what that look meant, or his own answering thrill.

Surely it was just some effect of the spell.

Thor sighed from deep in his chest when Loki finally told him it was done.

"You should stay there until they are dried, though. And after that, I'll have to remain with you until it has reached its full effect, to ensure that all goes well."

Thor nodded, and he agreed to doss down on Loki's bed.

Some time after Thor fell asleep, the runes began to darken. Instead of flaking away, they blackened and shrank and seemed to writhe on Thor’s skin, until they were only the finest of lines, as if they had been written in darkest ink from the sharpest quill. And then they at last began to fade.

The instructions he had followed described it as color bleaching in the sun, but Loki had the impression that they were instead sinking in, into Thor’s body, being absorbed into him.

Before that point Thor slept peacefully, but when the last of the rune-forms disappeared, he stirred. It was a subtle motion; he twisted against the mattress, gave a faint cry. He stretched out on his back, fingers grasping at the air. His body stiffened and then relaxed, and his breathing hastened.

But then it all passed, and he sank into silent stillness once more.

Loki spent the rest of the night with hope warring within him with some other feeling, his eyes tracing over his brother's naked form endlessly, a sensation in his chest like he was barely able to breathe. He watched the bruises, waiting for them to fade, trying to detect any tiny changes as the minutes passed. He listened for the rhythm of Thor’s breathing, waiting for each of the soft sounds.

He didn't understand what had been happening to Thor, to himself, _between them_. He did not like not understanding it, not being able to explain why he felt so unsettled sitting by his brother's bedside watching over him, some indescribable dissatisfaction burning under his skin and making him restless.

He was beyond disliking it.  

Loki’s fists clenched and flexed upon his knees.

At least if the spell worked, he would not have to endure it anymore. The book had said the spell would restore the wellbeing of any god who had been suffering from a troubled spirit, bring them back to themselves.

Loki thought of that as the hours stretched on, his awareness mingling into a half-doze, eyelids heavy, until the sky began to grow light with soft colors seeping through the window.

When it was fully morning, Thor opened his eyes and bolted up at once.

“It worked,” he said, turning his hands over and peering at the unmarked skin.

“I think it did," Loki said, a little sluggish from his own sleepless night. "But what makes you say that?”

“I can feel it.” Thor flexed his arms and turned them over again. “I feel stronger. I feel better."

Then he looked down at himself as if remembering—the bruises were indeed at last gone, gone as if they’d never been. And a grin broke on Thor's face, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

“Thank you, brother, for doing this for me.”

Loki returned his smile, though he wished he were not so weary and could share his brother's enthusiasm.

XII.II

It was the first time the skies had cleared in days.

Accordingly, Thor was behaving like a child who had been cooped up inside too long.

"This is so much better, brother," Thor told him, almost giddy. He seemed unable to stop moving for so much as five seconds, pacing and gesturing, rubbing his hands together.

Loki raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

Joy was brimming in his voice when Thor went on. “I feel… I feel better than I have in years. Since we lost you, there were so many things that troubled me. Now I feel… now I can forget that we ever fought. All the terrible things that happened upon Midgard. Now we can go back to the way things were, as if you were never gone.”

And tears were brimming in his eyes as he reached over and clasped Loki’s arm, his feelings bare on his face.

Loki did all he could to mask his own, the sinking feeling in his belly, the desire to snap back that they certainly could _not_.

_He_ could not ever go back to the way things were. And he didn’t want to. He’d been away too long for that, had himself been far too changed by the past years. He could not be the foolish innocent he once was, quiet in Thor’s shadow, aching in ways he could not define. And it had only been bearable to return at his brother’s side because things _were_ different. Different between them. Different for him, everyone seeing him truly at last.  

Loki sealed his lips and tried to smile and did not say any of that as Thor went on, babbling about how it would be, all the things he could now pretend had never happened, all the things he could now believe had never mattered. No matter that they mattered to Loki still.

If Thor was truly well again, Loki did not want to jeopardize it. He wanted Thor to be happy. And once things had settled down again, they could talk and he would make his own position clear, how he could quite readily leave again if Thor could not grasp that.

Loki bit his tongue and stayed silent for now, because this could not last forever. It was just Thor's response to feeling better, and Loki could surely endure it until the initial exhilaration passed.

XII.III

Henrik was heading back to his own chambers in the servants’ wing at the end of the day when he passed the princes in the hallway.

He had been worried ever since the other night, but now things seemed… more or less well again. At least in a certain light.

Thor had his arm around his brother’s shoulders, and he was talking excitedly about what was in store for them that evening, insisting that they must go out to celebrate.

Loki, on the other hand, wore a strained smile, and he looked as exhausted as Thor had before. He looked on edge, off kilter. Yet as Henrik watched, he nodded, acquiescing. And when Thor let out a breath of pleased laughter, Loki turned his face to him and the smile on his lips looked a little more genuine.

Neither of them noticed Henrik, though he would not have expected them to. He watched them go, feeling a little better, rolling his shoulders and letting his worries fall away as he continued on his way home. The care between the two was evident, and that was a thought that made the realms seem a kinder place. If such a rift as theirs could be mended, then surely all the ills in the world could be healed.

Henrik grinned to himself and hoped their evening out went well.


	13. Chapter 13

XIII.I

At Loki's insistence, the place they chose was an out-of-the-way tavern in a part of the city they rarely visited. An establishment where they were unlikely to meet anyone of their own circle.

"I don't want this to end up a close, intimate celebration between the two of us and your twenty dearest friends, brother, and you can't claim that hasn't ever happened," Loki said, with a pointed look, when Thor suggested someplace more familiar.

Thor looked a little stung, but he shook it off and nodded. "Very well. What matters to me is only that we are together and there is a convivial atmosphere for us to share."

A secluded table in the back—though they passed through a healthy crowd to get there—and an order of large mugs of the house's finest ale...

... and the evening went on much as the day had.

Loki tried. He truly did, listening without complaint to Thor's tales of their old exploits—as if he did not know them—with Thor’s own victories magnified beyond even the jealous truth of Loki's memory. Loki nodded along and smiled between mouthfuls of ale and murmurs of "yes, brother, of course it was magnificent, do go on." Listening as he was told again and again how happy Thor was that now things could be like that again (Loki shuddered), and having to look across the table into dewy eyes misted with nostalgia as Thor fervently clasped his hand and vowed that he would never again let any foolishness come between them.

Hours of endless, addlebrained chatter, with Thor too oblivious to notice Loki’s discomfort, only growing louder and more boisterous with drink.

Loki bore it until he snapped, slamming his mug down to the table with a clang. "Thor! Do you never cease?"

Thor's mouth hung open, his eyes wide with shock. "I..."

"You have been doing nothing but prattle about our past all day! Now, brother, I understand that you're pleased, but I do not actually _want_ to think of those times. I have not wanted to think of them in years. I don't think I wanted to think of them when I was living them. Can you possibly find something else inane to talk about, or must I simply put my fingers in my ears to have some peace this night?"

Thor's cheeks had colored in red splotches while Loki yelled, and he gasped a few uneven breaths as he stared back.

Worse, the din of conversation in the rest of the room had quieted just enough that Loki knew for certain his own outburst had been noted and was probably just then becoming the topic of all the room's gossip. He stared down into the last traces of foam in his glass, his own face burning.

Damn it all.

"I'm sorry, brother. I didn't mean that," he said a moment later.

Thor didn't answer. When Loki looked, he was still staring Loki's direction, but the expression of shock had turned stormy, hurt, bitter. It was too ugly a look for Thor's face, and the urge to fix it—Loki practically tripped over his own tongue.

"You can talk about whatever you like. It's your celebration. Truly. I wish to listen."

Loki reached out to rest his hand upon Thor’s, but Thor yanked his fist out of reach and turned away. "No, you don't."

"I do. Please."

All he received that time was a petulant shake of Thor's head. Not even a glance.

Loki sighed and scrubbed weary fingers across his face. "I am in need of the privy. When I return, we can begin again, if you're willing."

XIII.II

Loki was in the process of refastening his trousers when he heard the crash of glass being shattered, and for a moment he thought nothing of it.

Yet it was followed almost instantly by a louder crash and a series of shouts, and then by an unidentifiable rumbling sound that sent a shot of terror through Loki’s guts. He blanched and rushed back—a brawl, surely it was no more than a simple bar brawl—surely it had nothing to do with them, with Thor, surely—

Two minutes later, he was dragging Thor out the back door as the tavern went up, crackling orange flames licking at the black sky and spouting embers across it like brief stars. And the image he’d seen when he emerged back into the tavern’s main room was burned into his mind. The sight of Thor as he cut down one patron after another, some turning to fight, some scrambling to flee, the fury on his face mindless, blind—yet he had stopped and turned when Loki approached, shouting his name.

Now Loki was furious, and being furious at Thor was easy, easier than fear. Being furious at Thor had been habit for so long, and now Thor was staring at him, that same embittered frown, while Loki tried to drag him farther away from the scene of the destruction.

“You idiot. You _idiot_ ,” Loki screamed, able to come up with nothing more eloquent, and he flicked another wave of magic at the fire with one negligent hand. It had to burn, it all had to burn before anyone could come to put it out. If anything more than ashes survived, it would be obvious how many of those within were already dead, slain by fist or hammer-strike, before the fire was lit.

Thor growled at him in reply. “I only do as you have done.”

Loki stared at him momentarily, the words nonsensical. “As _I_ have done? As _I_ have—Thor, I have never killed Asgardians in a _barfight,_ for no reason whatsoever. What were you trying to do? Were you even thinking at all? Or were you leaving that part to me, to sort out your messes afterward, like _you’ve_ always done?”

Thor’s bitter look deepened, mouth twisting, and he tugged back where Loki still held tight to his wrist. “You don’t care about me. You have never cared about me.”

Loki gritted his teeth. The building beside them was creaking, groaning with the inevitable collapse. Flickering orange light rolled across them both in waves of heat while sparks flew and smoke billowed out, thick and black and oily and altogether too near. And Thor thought a good thing to be doing was standing there accusing him and refusing to budge.

“Come on, or we will both soon be suffering for your stupidity,” Loki snarled as he yanked again on Thor’s arm. “I know you don’t know what that feels like, but just try to imagine it, would you?”

Thor glared at him darkly. “You are the one who knows nothing of suffering.”

Loki struck him in the face before he could stop himself.

And then there was one brief, still moment before Thor’s entire body hit him, with a roar of rage that ached in his ears. The next Loki knew, they were on the ground, grappling with each other as Thor growled at him, accused him of hate and malice and lies and evil plans.

Thor’s fist connected with his belly hard enough to knock his breath from him, and Loki felt himself sweating in the waves of heat pouring off the blaze only feet away. He tried to roll them farther from it, across the damp, filthy ground of the alleyway—some part of his mind was still calm enough to think of the importance of _not burning_ …

And then he was fighting for his life, because Thor was above him, pressing down with both hands around his neck with what felt like all his weight, all of his immense strength, his tense broad shoulders silhouetted above, and Loki flailed and bucked, clawed at his arms—futile. Thor’s fingers were stone.

Loki’s ears were ringing, his vision swimming and blackening at the edges. All he could see was a haze in which Thor flickered, messy strands of blond framing his face, eyes fierce and dark and deep. His teeth bared in a snarl, his harsh breaths a hiss under the crackling of the blaze.

His hands squeezing too tight, crushing Loki’s windpipe.

Loki formed pleas with his lips as he struggled, and Thor did not even seem to notice.

It took Loki longer than it should have to understand it, the thought at first incomprehensible.

_Thor meant to kill him. Thor truly meant to kill him._

The grip around his throat relaxed only when he had fumbled the blade from the hidden sheath at his side and shoved it deep, buried it to the hilt between Thor’s ribs. Only then did Thor gasp and let go, his blood pouring out to soak the sleeve of Loki’s tunic.

Then Loki was shoving him away and lurching up,  head pounding and vision clearing, coughing and wheezing and choking.

Beside him, Thor collapsed a little to one side, groaning, shuddering. Limbs moving as he tried to get back up but failed. Sinking down onto the pavement.

And all around them the smoke was growing thicker by the moment, curling in dark ribbons, turning into a grey-brown haze in which ash fell.

When Loki had at last recovered enough to look, Thor had gone still, lying there pale, eyes open and unblinking, glistening in the fire's glow as his blood dripped away into the gutters.

Loki stared, but there was no time to panic. No time to indulge the fear that plunged through him.

This time at least he already knew what he had to do.

And this time, he would get it right.

XIII.III

The drunken peasant standing at the end of the alley stared transfixed at the fires as they burned. He was drunk enough to have been thrown out of that same tavern an hour ago, drunk enough that he felt no sense of alarm as he watched the cheery flames spread. He had just emptied his bladder against the wall and for the moment everything was pleasant.

The sight of the two men—he was sure he recognized them, sure he knew their faces well—interested him only mildly. Even as they begin to scream at one another. The peasant scratched himself and tried to make sense of what they were saying—their words seemed to pile up, trip over one another, and he had to squint to even begin to sort them out.

He watched, fascinated, as they knocked each other down and began to scuffle, silhouetted against the copper-red light of the growing blaze. It wouldn’t last long. He’d seen enough such fights in taverns to know how these things always went.

Afterward, after the two men disappeared, though, he frowned. The blond one wasn’t moving when the darker one knelt beside him in the smoke just before it enveloped them completely. And the sight made him shudder and wrap his arms around himself, clinging as if for comfort.

In the morning he remembered none of it at all, only the reek of smoke clinging to his clothes and a feeling that left him shivering, for no reason he could have explained.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, folks. With the news the other night, I didn't really have the heart for it. But I think we can now get back to your regularly scheduled fic. Thanks for sticking around!

XIV.I

It was the sunlight seeping through his closed lids that eventually wakened Loki, and a moment later he was shoving himself upright in Thor’s bed with a start.

Thor wasn’t there.

Loki scrambled out into the halls, heart racing. But eventually he found him, sitting at a little table in one of the dining rooms, with his head braced on his hand and a cup of some steaming elixir in front of him. By the scent of it, Loki was certain it was some cure for the lingering miseries of overindulgence.

As Loki entered, Thor mumbled something, his nose in the cup.

“Hm?” Loki said as he glided over behind Thor’s chair.

“Whatever I drank last night, never let me partake of it again,” Thor repeated in a low grumble, and he sounded so pained that Loki’s hands automatically dropped to his shoulders and began to knead and rub.

“You drank quite a few things last night.”

At the touch Thor bowed his head forward, his tensed frame sinking, softening. “How did we get back? I… I remember none of it.”

Loki had hefted his brother’s corpse over his shoulder, carried him through the thick, choking smoke, away from the fire as the first cries alerted the neighborhood around to the danger. Loki had welcomed the weight of him even as he staggered under it. With every step it anchored him to certainty. He would take Thor home. He would do what he needed to do.

“You were dead drunk,” Loki answered calmly. “I carried you.”

Thor sighed. “Thank you.”

Once inside, Loki had arrayed his brother’s body on the bed—peeling away bloody garments and biting back a sob each time he had Thor’s limbs under his hands, the flesh cool and limp and subtly discolored—and he had finally understood. He had been refusing to see it, Thor's strange behavior and its significance. He at last admitted it to himself as he touched his brother's cold skin and felt the lump of grief in his throat.

His spell, the one with which he had brought his brother back from death, had gone wrong.

It had not worked as it should. Something had failed subtly within the spellwork he had devised, and he simply had not noticed at the time. It explained Thor’s confusion, his moodiness, his fits of violence. It explained the way his body refused to heal itself on a proper schedule, why it rejected the apples of immortality… the spell had gone wrong, and it had left Thor unbalanced.

But it had gone wrong, Loki realized, because he had performed it on that accursed mortal realm, a realm so weak in magic that it was like trying to breathe the air on a high mountaintop, thin and unsatisfying, and even a simple fire might flicker out from the lack.

And now he’d been given another chance. This time, it would work. Here in Asgard—a realm that had always been kind to Thor, and one rife with the raw material that Loki needed to work with—here Thor could surely be made whole again.

And he had.

Loki rubbed at Thor’s shoulders and neck. His fingers crawled up to trace circles on his scalp, and Thor emitted a little breath, almost a moan, and let his head tip backward until their eyes met.

“And then what happened after you carried me home?” Thor’s upside-down face was full of earnestness. His eyes curious and open and perfectly blue.

Loki’s heart skipped, uncertain what Thor meant. But then he remembered: he had been too exhausted to bother clothing Thor in a nightshirt after it was done. And he had collapsed beside him on the bed, only half-clad himself after stripping off his own blood-stained tunic. He had needed rest. He had needed to close his eyes if only for a few minutes… and Thor had woken like that, naked and in bed with his brother after a drunken night that he could not remember a moment of.

Loki flushed hot at the very thought, at the idea that Thor was worried about—about that.

He had never in their lives thought of his brother that way.

“We slept,” he murmured, throat tight, still running his fingers through Thor's hair and trying not to sound as thrown as he felt.

All the things Loki had ever felt for Thor... never, never had he thought of him like that. Mostly he had hated Thor, envied him, craved his downfall and his destruction. As a child he had admired Thor, yes. And he could not deny that some part of him loved the brother he had known all his life, even when he’d come to resent him as well. But never—

The thought of it made his insides squirm in something like panic. And more so at the way Thor gazed back at him, the dark of his lashes wide. Not afraid or disgusted but almost... hopeful.

"Oh."

Loki felt his heart hammering, sweat springing up on his skin. He had to pull his hands away from the tenderness of his brother's skin, stick them firmly at his own sides. Put space between them.

He murmured his hope that Thor would soon feel better as he instead took a seat beside him, at a casual, companionable distance, and he tried not to notice the look on Thor’s face as he stepped away. The sigh of loss as Loki’s hands left him.

Thor was well again, restored. The spell had truly worked as it should have this time. That was all that mattered.

XIV.II

Thor was well again, and a few days passed.

Thor was well again now. That was what mattered. And of course nothing had _happened_ between them as they lay in the same bed after a drunken night. Loki spent a lot of time not thinking of it, not envisioning the look on Thor’s face, his head tilted back and his eyes soft as a doe’s, when he had asked that question. Loki did not think of that at all, much as he did not think of the weeks that had passed before. All the things that had gone wrong. It was far better to put it all out of his mind.

In the days after he revived his brother again, Thor was—as far as Loki could see—perfectly well. He kept one eye on Thor as much as he dared, wanting to be sure but not wanting Thor to notice the attention, not wanting to make more of it than it needed to be.

He was surprised, on the fourth day, to join Thor at the breakfast table and find his quiet mood turned to a downcast frown, the clouds beyond the window gathering grey.

Thor glanced at him when he asked, troubled.

"Father sent a message. He says our private holiday is over and he will be needing me at the palace more in the coming days."

For a moment, Loki frowned and bit his lip, thinking of ravens.

"I suppose we should have been expecting that," he said.

Thor nodded, shrugged. "I will see you this evening, then?"

"Of course."

Loki managed to keep himself occupied throughout the day. He spent much of the day dissatisfied with everything and only belatedly calling the feeling restlessness as he wandered here and there, counting down the hours.

There were many things not to think about.

When Thor came home that night, Loki found himself rushing to be in his brother’s company again, craving it, though he had not felt such a thing for Thor in years, and he hurried through the hallways when he heard the murmur of feet at the door, and he took in the sight of him.

Thor looked wearied, his eyes glazed in the way of someone who had spent far too many hours at a consuming task. He also looked something of a mess, the sides of his tunic soaked in sweat and mud splattered up past his boots onto his leggings.

It seemed Thor had rounded out his day with a visit to the training yards at the palace, where there were more opponents for him to spar with, and Loki trailed after him as he headed toward the baths, breathing the metallic, sour odor that clung to Thor’s person.

“So tell me of your day, brother,” Loki said as they walked. “Is court as unbearable as it was the last time I attended?”

Thor blinked at him and nodded, as if his head were heavy.

“Well? What happened?”

It took a great deal of coaxing to get Thor to talk. He began, hesitantly, mumbling something about the treachery of Dark Elves and the stubbornness of farmers, and Loki listened, humming his agreement, while every few breaths Thor threw a glance his way.

The strangeness between them certainly had not passed, and Loki still did not know what it meant.

“I would say I wish I could be there to help you endure such trials, but I’m afraid I don’t, actually,” Loki said with a quirk of a grin after one of Thor’s grumbles.

Thor did not seem to take it for the jest it was, though, with a solemn shrug and a murmur that he understood.

Around that point, they reached the baths.

The baths at Bilskirnir were magnificent things, from the private baths in the multitude of bedrooms to the larger ones meant for communal enjoyment, all of them carved from a smooth grey-white stone that felt pleasant against the skin, golden details gleaming here and there to catch the eye, and the deep basins filled with steaming water fragranced with sweet oils.

Absentmindedly, Loki watched as Thor pulled the tunic over his head, the garment turning inside out as he pulled, arms up within its confines.

A smear of red was revealed, covering Thor’s flank. All up and down his side, a sharp contrast against the pale gold of his hip, all the way up into where the wet cloth had been dragged against the dark blond curls in Thor’s armpit.

Loki stared, uncomprehending, until he spotted the two-inch wound beneath Thor’s lowest rib when it let out another gout of dark fluid as Thor moved, twisted, breathed. A gush of blood from a puncture in his flesh. The smooth edges a deep, wet red.

Thor saw his look and followed the path of his wide eyes, turned his face down to look at himself. And then he blanched. Blinked.

“What happened?” Loki asked.

"I... I do not know."

"How can you not know?" Loki’s heart thudded as he approached, bending to peer closer. His panic instant.

Thor angled his body away and put his hand to the wound, pressing his palm against it. "There was a… a spear. It was but a glancing blow. I did not feel any such cut. It cannot be deep, surely.”

Loki grabbed him, pulled his hand away, stared at the bleeding flesh, thick blood oozing from it.

"It doesn't hurt at all," Thor added, freeing his hand only to prod at the cut again, and that time he absently poked a finger _into_ the wound, tugging and twisting.

"Stop that!" Loki cried, lightheaded. "I'll heal it if you just give me a moment."

When he put his own hand on it to do so, though, Thor hissed and flinched.

"I thought you said it doesn't hurt."

Thor shifted on his feet. "It... it doesn't. It just feels..."

The next sound was more like a whimper. A shuddery breath, and then a groan, and Loki was aware of his hands on his brother's bare flesh as he murmured the words of the healing spell and the edges of the cut knitted swiftly back together, leaving him as unmarked and perfect as he had ever been.

He couldn't quite meet Thor's eyes after. And the bath (which Thor certainly needed, and Loki did then as well) still waited.

They bathed in silence, Thor shucking off his leggings and immersing himself in the water and washing himself with uncharacteristic reserve. Loki, when he followed, stayed on the far side of the pool and now and then he felt his brother's gaze upon him, making gooseflesh rise where wet skin emerged from the warm water. He dunked his head under, kept his eyes shut when he came back up, hair plastered to his face as the water ran down until he pushed it back.

He tried not to think of what that wound had meant, even as he scrubbed the last traces of blood from under his nails. Thor had been restored, well again once and for all.

Loki had been so sure of that.

XIV.III

That night, Loki dreamed.

The dreams did not wake him, and later he did not remember them except as a sensation, an unsettled feeling that stayed with him throughout the day and for many days that followed.

In them, though, he had his fist around the handle of a knife, and the knife was buried in his brother's flesh, and blood spurted out hot over his hand, and he could feel himself gulping breath after breath of sweet air. He felt it in his lungs, each breath, and Thor’s hand clutching tight to him somehow, desperate, even as he twisted the blade. He gazed at his brother’s face, the wide blue eyes, the gasping mouth. He was aware of the heat of Thor's body, so near. And he felt the hum in his own throat, some sound he had not known he made.

Asleep, he shuddered and twitched, sweat cold upon his skin, the bedclothes clinging. He woke later with his eyelashes crusted over and his jaw aching and a hollow throbbing in his chest.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Want to emphatically note my gratitude to [Lise](http://gorgeousgalatea.tumblr.com/) who has helped and reassured me on various chapters of this thing so far.

XV.I

The skies above Asgard were growing dark again, a dreary blanket of clouds gathering to cast their shadows on the ground below, though they had not yet turned to storm. Winds flicked along beneath them, grasses rustling on the roadside, and a small dark shape was carried upon those gusts. Black feathers and clever, shiny black eyes.  

Muninn watched the ground below warily.

On Odin's order, he was keeping patrol over the city, and—when he could—spying upon the princes. Particularly the elder one.

_ Younger? _ he had thought at his master, beak canted aside in question, when the order was given.

"No,  _ elder," _ Odin insisted, eyebrow raising.

So that was what Muninn did, flying high above each day while Thor rode from Bilskirnir to the palace, and later home again.

Oddly, Muninn found that though Thor was the one expected in Odin’s court, he did not leave his hall quite alone, another figure always following shortly after him, sneaking along behind as if no one could see him.

_ Loki follows him every day,  _ Muninn reported early on, flying madly back to the Allfather with his tidings.

Odin turned to gaze at him. "Oh? And what does he do?"

Muninn tilted his head.  _ Follows him, like I said. Then doesn't follow him when he enters the palace, but he finds him again later and follows him back to Bilskirnir. _

Odin gave a grim  _ harrumph _ . "Like  _ I _ said, you are to pay most attention to Thor. Now, go."

Muninn had gone, and he had done as the Allfather said as best he could, and he had begun to see strange things. Even aside from the younger prince following without Thor seeming to notice. 

He flew overhead while Thor wandered the palace grounds the first time the rain came again; Thor’s steps slowed to a halt, and he stood in the middle of the walkway, unmoving, until the drops had soaked him—but not seeming to glory in it. 

Muninn perched on a branch of a nearby oak, tucking his wings against his sides and peering at the Allfather’s son and trying to figure out just what he was doing, standing there with his shoulders and head low, rain drenching his hair and dripping from his fingertips. Eventually, he looked up, expressionless, and kept going along the path he had been walking, toward the stables.

Muninn shrugged to himself, feathers rustling softly, and followed. 

The next day, Muninn watched from the high rafters above the palace training yard as Thor sparred with his friends, and he saw the argument break out but was too far to make out the content of their shouting, and he watched Thor stalk angrily away from them. 

He found himself lingering afterward, stepping sideways along the rough wood post, watching the grumbling huddle of the aggrieved group of friends, then gliding down to a closer perch to try to listen in. Frustrated voices low, one—Sif—insisting upon something, though he could not quite tell what. He snapped out of it when the group split up after a few more minutes of discussion, going their separate ways.

Madly he flapped away the direction Thor had gone, only to end up looping above the city, wings spread wide, when the thunder god evaded him. 

He told Odin all of it later that evening, upon his perch, the old man turning that sharp eye upon him.

“Strange behavior indeed,” Odin murmured, as if to himself.

Muninn rubbed his beak against the underside of a wing. 

XV.II

Thor was not well.

Loki knew it, and he had trailed after Thor yet again, peeling aside on his own errands only once Thor had disappeared beyond the palace doors.

Thor was not well, and Loki had not yet been able to discover exactly what had gone wrong in his spell to cause it. Each day, while Thor was shut away in Odin’s councils, Loki spent hours searching, only to emerge into the thin daylight knowing nothing new.

His failure was beginning to worry him, and that day he chose a spot at the edge of the gardens, hidden in the shadows beneath a willow with his back slumped against the cool bark, in which to wait for Thor to appear. 

Every day, Loki followed him home again in the evening, or as he went about his own business in the city. Loki needed to be there, in case… 

"Kaaark!" 

Startled, Loki tilted his head back to stare at the branch overhead, the large black bird that had come to alight upon it with a rustle of wings, intelligence bright in its beady eyes. 

“Go away,” Loki hissed at it.

"Kaaaaark," it answered, peering down at him. 

Loki did not like the sight of it in that place, in that moment. The idea that he might not be the only one watching. The reminder that he might be watched himself, no matter how he stayed to the shadows. 

Still glaring up, he stooped and picked up a stone from the ground and hefted it in his hand.

“Don’t think I won’t,” Loki warned, and the feathered idiot hopped nervously a few inches along the branch, eyeing him.

Swiftly Loki drew his arm back and let fly, and the missile would have hit had the raven not lit from its perch, the stone cutting the air inches beneath its curled talons. 

In a frantic flapping, it flew overhead for a few more moments, cawing and screaming, before it flew off toward an open window of the palace.

Loki sighed.

It was growing late as well, the day fading, the skies deepening, the shadows dissolving into simple darkness, and with it the wind was taking on a biting chill and the clouds were stirring as if they might turn to rain again. 

Loki was thoroughly uncomfortable when he at last spotted the sullen figure trudging along the walkway, the sight making his heart leap. He slipped gratefully into step behind him, trailing him at a careful distance.  

At least it was easy to remain unnoticed.

Thor’s head was down, his shoulders up, the wind stirring his hair but he seemed little aware of anything. The patter of a few drops of rain shaken loose from the sky. The tapping footsteps of the occasional passerby hurrying homeward. Loki ducked his own head when they passed him. 

He had followed Thor like this many times over the past days, a nervous feeling filling him, and it still took him a few moments to grasp it when it happened. 

The stranger in Thor’s path. A few words exchanged, though Loki was too far away to hear, and the other man heading off in his own direction. 

And Thor following, pace increasing slightly as his hand dropped to the haft of Mjolnir at his belt. 

Loki’s heart was racing, though he did not yet know why. 

When it happened, he did not have time to do anything. Only to watch in horror as Thor growled something at the other man, who turned in surprise—

Loki flinched at the unmistakable fleshy sound, the crack and crunch of bone.

Thor struck again, shoulders tensing and squirming. 

And then it was over, the body a mangled red thing at Thor’s feet, Thor standing above it unmoving. Then stepping over it, past it, feet scraping on the ground as he wandered onward. 

Loki felt frozen, his eyes wide and his limbs refusing to move. But in moments he had shaken it off and closed the last few paces of distance between him and the unfortunate stranger.

As quickly as he could, he made the evidence disappear, and he glanced up into the dark sky afterward, hoping desperately not to see a flicker of wings.

XV.III

A little while later, Loki welcomed his brother home.

He had caught up with Thor nearly at the palace stables, and Loki had somehow managed it, a wide loop overtaking him, rushing back to Bilskirnir and arriving in time to slip back inside and feign as if he had never been gone. 

“You’re late,” he said, forcing a grin, when Thor trudged through the door.

Thor looked at him, and strangely, he seemed nervous. Wary. “The day’s councils ran long. I’m sorry.”

“No matter,” Loki said with a shrug.

It was odd to hear Thor lie. Usually he was dreadful at it. This time, had Loki not known better he would have believed it, and it made him wonder whether Thor truly did as well. Whether he even knew. 

They ate together shortly after, Loki wrapping his fingers around Thor’s elbow to guide him along to their private dining room, somehow coming up with a stream of mindless chatter, trying to draw Thor out. Thor let himself be led along, but he said little. And when they sat down, in brief glances Loki watched Thor barely eat at all, merely pushing the food around on his plate, staring down at it with a look of distaste and swallowing only a few mouthfuls before pushing it aside.

Loki tried to tell himself that this was not so odd. Perhaps Thor simply wasn’t hungry. Perhaps it had been a difficult day and he was simply tired.

Likewise when they retired to Thor’s chambers and Thor remained quiet, closed off, Loki tried to tell himself it meant nothing. 

The assurance rang hollow even within his own head. 

Thor sat across from him, eyes downcast, expression troubled, fingers worrying at a loose thread on his tunic. He took a breath, shoulders hunching over when he exhaled. 

"No one has faith in me now,” Thor said, like it was a revelation, something he at last understood.

Loki tilted his head. “”Hm?”

“Father doesn't listen to me in his councils. He watches me when he thinks I do not notice, as if he fears I will do something to disgrace him. Even my friends, they do not believe me when I speak anymore. No one does. They all think I am a fool.”

Loki frowned, but he did not have a chance to get a word out.

“It was not like this before. It never used to be this way. It’s because of you.”

These last words hit Loki like an unexpected slap.

"How could that  _ possibly  _ be my fault?” He tried to be calm. He had to be calm, so that he could talk Thor down from his anger.

Yet it was hard to remember that when Thor was glaring poison at him, hands clenching into fists at his sides.

"It is. It's because of you."

"Because I came back with you?"

"No!" Thor growled. "Because you left in the first place!"

"And what does that have to do with..."

Thor shook his head. "It doesn't matter."

"Thor—"

"Stop pretending you care about me. You do not. I know you don’t."

Loki forced himself to breathe. "That's not true."

Thor turned away, buried his face in his arms, and his next words were muffled. "You are a liar. And everything has been wrong since you left me."

The tension in Loki's chest ached, and he put his hand to Thor's shoulder, trying to soothe him, but Thor stiffened at the touch.

"Leave me alone."

He sounded like a petulant child, and Loki did not obey the command, instead stroking, thumb rubbing in a soft, determined pattern. "Thor, stop this. If I didn't care about you, why would I be here now?"

"Because you mean to mock me. You mean to hurt me, as you always do."

"I  _ don’t _ ,” Loki insisted through gritted teeth. “Do you need me to prove it? What do you want me to do?”

The silence lasted a very long time, broken only by the sounds of wet snuffling.

Thor stirred only when Loki let his hand fall away at last, getting to his feet, limbs stiff. Thor looked up, face wet and mouth open. 

“Stay with me.”

“What?”

Thor wiped a hand across his eyes. “That… that is what I’m asking. To prove it.”

Loki hesitated. “I already said I wouldn’t leave.”

“No, I mean stay here with me tonight. In my chambers. I don’t feel right. Everything is wrong and I don’t want to be alone. I want you beside me.”

Loki gazed down at him, at Thor’s weak attempt at a smile, and could not find it in himself to refuse.  

He stayed, lying down at Thor’s side in his bed, which was fortunately quite large enough for two even with the wide gap Loki left between them, and he lay there while Thor fell asleep, his breathing going slow and even.

After Thor was asleep, Loki found himself turning onto his side, peering across at his brother, the outline of his face in the dark, the faint flutter of his eyes beneath the lids, the soft curve of his lips as he breathed, the occasional twitch of his brow. 

Studying him, unable to look away, unable to nod off himself, uneasiness and determination within him. Somewhere beyond the window, thunder groaned. His brother’s peaceful, sleeping face illuminated in the white flash of lightning, the bright glare of it a brief instant leaving Loki in deeper darkness after.

He tugged the coverlet over himself, over his eyes, insisting to his mind that what he needed was rest, for the sake of the morrow.

He needed to fix this. Perhaps tomorrow he would find the answers he needed to make it all well again.


	16. Chapter 16

XVI.I

Loki began to grow frantic as the days passed.

Days went by, and he spent as much time as he could spare trying to find out what had gone wrong in his spell, exactly. Trying to find a solution to mend what had broken even when he could not find the shattered piece.

Hours, the pages turning under his fingers, annoyance blossoming into frustration as each tome turned out useless, either repeating the common wisdom he had already proven false—that such a feat could not be done—or turning aside into other topics, the healing of near-deadly injuries, the origins and treatment of the few lingering illnesses to which Asgardians might fall victim, the healing of troubles not of the body but of mind and spirit.

Once he thought he had found a reference that might offer the answers he sought and eagerly opened to the page, only to find himself faced with naught but old rumors and folk tales. Stories of _draugar_ skulking home from their graves, rotting from within, becoming mindless and violent and cruel. Seeming enough like themselves that their grieving kin could not bear to turn them from their homes, yet _changed_ in awful ways. Terrorizing those they had loved, able to remember only the wrongs and sorrows of their lives. Tormented, wretched, and soon becoming dangerous. And each tale ended with instruction on how the _draugr_ could be finally slain.

Loki slammed the book shut with a growl, threw it across the room, a buzzing filling his ears, a tremble passing through his body.

And he could take no more that day. So he slipped out into the streets, trying to clear his head.

He instead wound up hearing whispers. Ears perking up when he passed little huddles of folk trading rumors in quiet, wary voices, and sidling closer through the shadows to listen.

The skies above were forever grey, the rain coming down in fits, thunder rumbling like a distant growl, and a sense of unease had fallen over Asgard. Loki heard hushed gossip of mysterious events. Disappearances, fires. Animals behaving strangely. Talk all over that something was wrong. Some spoke of other realms, claiming that the source must be from outside, some influence no one yet knew. Others looked doubtful and mumbled the words of old myths and legends.

Loki squeezed his eyes shut, a sick feeling in his belly.

There had been more incidents, occurring when he followed Thor in the evenings. Loki thought he had managed to cover them all up. He was getting to know the signs, the emptiness that sometimes seeped into Thor’s eyes, blue turning to grey, and the agitation twitching into his limbs.

Each time he saw that, Loki steeled himself, ready for what would come. And then how quickly it would pass.

Each time, Loki threw furtive glances over his shoulder as he disposed of yet another body, glad for the storms and the dark that cloaked them.

Each time, he tried to calm his panic before he made it back to Bilskirnir, for he tried to keep some sense of normalcy in the evenings they spent together.

One night he drew Thor along with him for supper, his own belly grumbling at his neglect and louder when a thick, fragrant stew was set before them, the scent of it making Loki’s mouth water.

Thor, however, turned up his nose.

“Will you not even try it?” Loki asked, pausing between bites.

Thor looked uneasy, stirring a spoon at the edges of the glistening brown liquid, lifting it to his mouth, barely tasting it before making a face and pushing the bowl aside.

"Thor, you have to eat something," Loki coaxed.

“I’m not hungry.”

A little nagging worry, though, made Loki frown. “Did you eat this morning, at least? You barely had anything last night either.”

Thor shook his head.

Loki quashed the low, nagging alarm that spread through him, only tilting his head and giving Thor a little grin. “All the more reason, then. Just a little bit. What would Mother say?”

That was enough to get Thor to choke down a few mouthfuls, though he looked miserable all the while. And it was a trick that worked for several nights after, so Loki continued to use it. Surely it was better that Thor eat. He could not simply go without, no matter what was wrong.

In a few more days, Loki stopped pressing him to, after another evening trying to soothe Thor as his body was violently ill, sweat pooling on his skin and dark bile pouring from his stomach in each painful heave. Between bouts, he flopped back against his pillow, staring back at Loki with betrayal and hurt in his eyes, and Loki's own belly roiled with guilt.

Loki took the opportunity, when Thor had stripped off his shirt against the feeling of uncomfortable heat, to look him over for any new bruises, any unnoticed wounds.

Quietly, he healed all the ones he could find. The little scrapes and cuts that seemed not to be healing on their own. The dark bruises that seemed to spread and meld into each other at the edges.

Loki did all he could, and Thor’s body was still marred when he stopped, exhausted.

That night he slept in Thor’s bed again, as he now did each night. Thor rolled into the gap Loki left, knees drawn up and pressing against the side of Loki's legs, hands just brushing Loki's shoulder, gazing over at him before his eyes closed—Loki endured the awkwardness of that, did not try to make more space between them. Thor merely wanted to be close. And Loki found it hard to deny him, no matter how strange it felt. 

He was woken in the dark by sounds, by movement. Thor thrashing in his sleep, his body seeming almost to convulse, shaking, moaning in the depths of a nightmare, his tongue spilling a babble of nonsense words in a constant stream. And no matter how Loki shook him, he would not wake. Loki peeled back his eyelids to find only the whites beneath. Not until Loki pricked his skin with the tip of his knife did Thor’s eyes open, wild.

Thor grabbed hold of him when he finally woke, holding tight and sobbing against him, soaking his shoulder with tears, his murmurs indecipherable.

Loki wrapped his arms around him in return, lying there in the dark, his heart in his throat.

The next day it all began again. Waking and following Thor to the palace. Hours trying to find answers that evaded him still. Waiting, after, for everything the night would bring.

Waiting, he stood at the edge of Frigga’s gardens, breathing the familiar scent of mingled herbs and blooms, the sweet odor above the flavor of damp that lingered forever on the air under the grey skies. He tried to let it calm him. He needed not to let his growing fear overwhelm him, and any moment Thor would surely be there, and Loki had to be ready for whatever would occur.

He needed to fix this, and he could. He would. He was certain of it. He just needed a bit more time.

XVI.II

Odin narrowed his eye at the stormclouds that lingered over the city of Asgard.

Odin had once hung from a tree, pierced by his own spear. He was the foremost mage in the realm, as well as its king. But it hardly required any of that to realize that something was very wrong, and to realize the source of it.

The watch he had been keeping over his sons confirmed that, both of their behavior strange, Thor sullen and unpredictable and Loki skulking forever nearby, chasing Odin’s ravens away whenever he saw them, or slipping in and out of view for his own unknown purposes.

The only part that remained a mystery to Odin was the precise nature of the problem. And for that part, the wisdom and cunning of the realm’s foremost mage would probably help.

So Odin waited until the right moment came, and he called his son over to him at the end of the day’s meetings. Smiled and nodded at him in greeting.

"Thor. For all that I see you each day I feel that I have barely spoken to you since your return. Tell me, how do you fare?"

Thor's eyes met his briefly, and something peculiar flashed in them. He gave a murmur of an answer. "Well enough, Father."

Odin’s brow raised. That answer seemed not quite true: to his eye, Thor looked exceedingly weary, his skin sallow and slack, his expression irritable.

The working Odin wanted was the matter of a moment's silent breath, but it did not take effect as it should have, sliding off Thor's form like the shimmer of a mirage.

Odin smiled again, more tightly. "And your brother? Is he well also?"

Thor nodded but spoke no word.

The hand hidden within the sleeve of Odin's robe gestured, and again there was nothing. Odin frowned.

Another little spell, then, to see what was turning his own magecraft aside.

The effect was instantaneous and almost overpowering. If magic had a scent, Thor was reeking with it, the moment Odin thought to check. A multitude of spells clung to Thor's skin like inkstains, crawling with darkness and a faint green light.

There was no mistaking whose magic that was. But in the shifting miasmic mass of them, it was not clear at all what any one of them was meant to do.

Odin considered his next words carefully.

"You do not need to protect him, Thor.”

The look that flashed across Thor's face was one of shock, confusion. And fright. "What? Father..."

"I mean it truly. You need not protect him, for he is in no danger. I fear, though, that you may be. You can tell me if it is so. I will not allow harm to come to either of you."

A tensing of muscles, a twitch of brow, mouth twisted down as if at a bitter taste. "You have allowed harm to come to both of us before. You were the one who cast me out. And you imprisoned him."

Odin held his thin smile of reassurance, though it strained. He could hardly have asked for better proof. "I have also protected you both, all your lives. Sometimes even from each other. I will do so again any time it is necessary."

Thor looked away, anger rolling off him palpably. And with it, to Odin’s eye, a faint green light swirling with shadows. “There is no need. Loki does not harm me.”

Odin nodded his head, accepting. “I’m very glad to hear that.”

The words made Thor scowl, though. “You’re not. You don’t believe me. My brother is returned to my side and you think I do not know him. You would take him from me again. You don’t trust me any more than you trust him.”

“I said no such thing.”

“Yet it is what you meant. I am not the fool you think I am, and if Loki is not to be trusted, it’s because _you_ made him that way.”

Odin sat back, startled.

Thor’s head dipped as he realized what he’d said, who he’d said it to.

Odin let him go with only his murmured apology and tensed jaw and bowed head.

The rest of the day Odin spent in thought, the weight of responsibility heavy on his shoulders. In truth, Thor was right. It was his fault, that he had let Loki free despite his own doubts, that he had not noticed and intervened when the problems were growing years ago. That he had raised a son who could do whatever it was that Loki had done.

But since he had failed in those things, he would do whatever necessity required now.

Whatever spells they were that twisted and writhed upon Thor's skin, Odin would put an end to them. He would remove them, cleanse them away, free Thor of them, whatever their purpose. He needed but a little time to prepare.

And he needed to speak to Frigga to distract his other son while he carried out what he needed to do.

XVI.III

The next day, Muninn, on his patrol, found his wild kin gathered in a field just beyond the gates.

A field that looked like it was covered in shadow as he flew above, and as he stooped lower the darkness resolved into hundreds of moving shapes of black upon the green. A larger gathering of ravens than Muninn had ever seen, and they were gathered there for no reason he could discern. There was no carrion to pick at, yet they tokked amongst themselves and gazed at him as he landed, flapping down uneasily into the edges of the group.

All around him, in the rustle of wings and feathers, the tap and clack of beak and claw, they were murmuring the future, blood-soaked battle and corpse-strewn ruin. Murmuring death and war. Death all around and death in the air, in the sky, in the dark of the clouds.

Muninn was corvid, but he was also one of the Allfather's senses, brought into existence to serve that purpose, and he fluffed his feathers, craned his head aside.

"Death? How?” he asked, his tiny heart racing in his breast. “What death? Whose?"

The birds all around him stared back at him, as one, their eyes gleaming dark.

_All,_ they murmured, wordless. _All._


	17. Chapter 17

XVII.I

Loki woke when the day was already passing near to noon, the sun already high behind its dark curtain, and he bolted up, frowning.

Not only was it late, the other side of the bed was empty. And when Loki rushed through the corridors, there was no sign of Thor.

"He has already left for the day, my lord. Early this morning," said the first wide-eyed servant Loki came across in the hushed halls—and there were fewer of them these days as well, and the ones that remained cringed back at the sight of him.

"Left? Did he say anything?"

"No... we were told not to wake you."

Loki did not consider the question "by whom" until the quick, sharp rapping came at the door a few minutes later, rousing him in surprise.

No one had come to visit in weeks. So this was clearly not a social call.

The cynic in him expected strong warriors and mages, old men with tongues laden with the law to condemn him. He had seen the shadow of black wings enough times; if anything, this was late in coming. He knew that, and he did not allow himself to feel dread as he opened the door.

Yet he almost laughed at the sight of two women standing in the entryway, their hair in intricate twists and plaits, heavy wool cloaks darkened with rain around their shoulders, their faces determined.

He recognized them: Fulla and Gna, his mother’s handmaids, who had wiped the milk from his chin when he was no more than a babe. He had not seen them in years, and now they watched him as the door swung wide. They had been sent by Frigga—there was no other reason for them to be there.

Grinning wryly, determined not to show any fear, he draped himself languid against the frame of the door. 

“You’ve already missed him, if you’ve come for my brother,” he said as they exchanged a glance. “He has left for the day—seek him in Odin’s court.”

“No,” said Fulla. “We are here for you. The queen desires the presence of her younger son.”

Fulla was tall and blonde; Gna was shorter and ruddier but no softer, and she gazed at him without saying a word.

He could not very well refuse the queen’s command; thus he gestured for them to lead, giving them another smile as he did so.

But as they walked a strange feeling set in. A memory, Gna’s long chestnut braid swaying before his eyes. He could almost feel his younger self—half his current height and laughter bubbling behind his lips—he could almost feel himself reaching for it. It had enthralled him, how the swinging end of it curled, flipping back and forth with her steps. He had wanted, desperately, to pull it, his fingers aching with the need. He could almost feel Thor slapping his hand away still, his appalled shout of righteous indignation on the woman’s behalf.

That battle would go on between them for years. It would grow into a silly obsession as Loki sought to offend against every long-haired woman around him, just for how it made Thor furious.

Now, he chuckled, and he caught Gna glancing back at him severely over her shoulder. He gave her a wicked smile and a shrug.

Such thoughts occupied his mind the entire ride to his mother's wing of the palace. Somehow it seemed better than the alternative.

XVII.II

“My son,” Frigga said as they entered.

Loki had not seen her, except once or twice from afar, since the High Feast, and it was worse now. 

He had stopped thinking of himself as her son long ago. He had never stopped thinking of her as his mother. And the sight of her gazing at him the way she was now made him feel small again, in the most unpleasant way.

She sat in a high-backed chair of dark carved wood, framed on either side by loom and spindle, and she did not stand to greet him, though she did gesture to the seat beside her, and the table between them where there was a pot of steaming tea and two cups waiting. 

“How have you been keeping?” she asked, regal and calm.

Loki wandered over toward her but did not sit. Fulla and Gna gave no sign of leaving them; the two women quietly took positions at the other little weaving station near the door, pretending to ignore them and go about their work.

This could all have been such a cozy little scene, if it were not completely wrong. If he had not already known, it still would have been obvious what this was.

"What is this about, Mother?” Loki asked flatly, unable to play along, each passing moment sending a new flush of worry through his veins.

Frigga looked up at him again, and she was not smiling. Instead her eyes were hard as chips of blue stone, glinting in the dim light from the little brazier that warmed the room.

“Loki, sit down. I have something I must ask you.”

Something sank within him. He did not do as she asked, continuing to stand there, his entire body tensing in expectation.

“It would have been easier if you could have come to us before it had gone so far,” she said then, sighing, and Loki swallowed, for she had never before looked at him in that way. “It would be best now if you tell me all you can of what you have done.”

Loki shifted on his feet. “What I have done?”

Her look was one of deep disappointment.  “We—your father and I—we know you have done something to Thor, with your sorcery.” Her lips pressed together in a thin line and then released, softened. “Loki, what spell was it? I must know, if it is to be undone.” 

He could feel the handmaids standing in the room’s shadows somewhere near the closed, barred door, between the silent skeletons of looms. He thought of Frigga’s nimble fingers at her weaving, and the needle of her focus as she worked, her own intricate cunning. And a chill plummeted through him.

“Who would undo it?” he asked, breathless. But he already knew.

He thought of the ravens that had shadowed him near every time he ventured out in recent days, whenever he went without a guise of secrecy.

When Frigga did not answer, he yelled, demanded to know where they were, though he already knew it was a vain effort.

She was not going to tell him, and neither would her handmaids. He understood this in an instant. They believed they were keeping him away by necessity, they thought they were _protecting_ —

He started forward, and the two women grasped him—they were far from weak; together they attempted to restrain him. But he was stronger, driven by panic, and he knew what was at stake.

There was only the frailest flutter of guilt when the woman he shoved away flew backward and sank, her lovely chestnut head smacking hard against the edge of the table as she fell. He took the chance to break away as Fulla rushed to Gna’s aid, his skittering feet kicking over the brazier and sending ashes flying. And he ran, leaving his mother’s shouts behind, proving himself far swifter than any who might have followed.

_The old fool_ , Loki thought, when he managed to think anything.  _ The fool, the old fool, what does he think he's doing, the fool...  _

Loki's panic drove him through the rooms of the palace, darting to each place that might have been used for Odin's purposes.

But after a while without success, he found himself slowing slightly, the pounding of his heart slackening, the sweat drying from his skin.

He already knew he was going to be too late.

XVII.III

The guard was a dutiful man, and he ignored the noises that slipped past the dark metal of the door at which he had been posted.

He was Odin’s man, and he felt no need to avert his eyes as the king’s elder son was led past him. In other realms, in the mire of the past, he had attended the Allfather’s sacrifices, watched as the noose was tied and the spear bloodied. Watched without a twitch as the mortals who went below in Odin’s stead squirmed and thrashed in their final delirium, faces dark and eyes bulging in their sockets, turning red as the vessels burst. And though the guard had no skill in seiðr himself, he was able to let it buffet against his skin without fear.

He had been Odin’s man long enough that he could read the intention in the Allfather’s face as he passed, in his quick grey eye and the firm set of his mouth, and he watched warily as Odin’s son allowed himself to be led into the stone room like a beast to the slaughter, blindly, shoulders hunched and head low. He probably did not even realize what was about to occur.

The guard's hand soon ached from gripping his spear; he ignored the hisses, the muffled wails, the thumps. The groans of metal and chains.

The sound of running footsteps grew from a distant patter to a drumming that drew to a halt just before him as the younger prince then arrived, dark hair a disheveled mess, strands sticking to his brow. His eyes were wild and frightened, his face pale and streaked with sweat.

The guard stood his ground. He kept the silence of his duty as Loki gaped at him, at the door behind his back.

“Let me pass,” the prince demanded.

The guard made no reply; he was to let no one in, but especially not the dishonored one.

Behind him, through the door, there was another sound. A strange, dragging whisper that fell abruptly silent.

Loki stepped back, staring, and for one moment his face twisted as if he were about to leap onto the guard with knives and fists. But then his brow smoothed. He calmed. One finger tapped against his chin.

“Oh dear,” the trickster said. 

A few more minutes passed without so much as a the tap of a footstep from the other side of the wall.

The disgraced prince paced slowly, meaningfully, in the space directly before the door. “It has gone quiet in there, hasn’t it?” Loki leered. “But can you be entirely sure whose cries you heard? Were all of them my brother’s? Can you be entirely sure?”

The guard flicked a glance across Loki’s face. This was the trickster. The liar. The guard had many times heard Odin growling curses at the mention of his younger son, one hand to his eye as if pain grew behind it at the name. He knew Loki could not be believed. But…

“I will wait right here, if you wish to check.”

The guard knew he was a fool the moment he took his eyes off the silver-tongued mage and turned them toward the locked door.

The strike met his temple, barely more than a tap but backed by a buzzing ribbon of seiðr that slipped inside his head and slumped him back as the world went dark around him. The last thing he felt was a final sorrow at his failure, for he was Odin’s man.

Soon, he was no one’s man at all.


	18. Chapter 18

XVIII.I

Loki opened the door with terrible certainty in his heart, fumbling at the lock with unwilling fingers and forcing himself to gaze into the shadows within.

He knew what he would find. He could feel the magic spilling out from beneath the door all the while, like a black fog seeping into the stones at his feet; he knew what sort of chamber it was, dark and grim, with a runnel carved into the floor leading to a drain. The smell of metal and damp and fear, sweat forever seeped into the slab of stone in the center of the room.

He knew, and yet as his eyes adjusted to the darkness it was still a shock. There was a body upon the floor, its neck broken, an unnatural angle that hurt to see, face twisted hard to one side. More injuries upon it that spoke of a prolonged struggle, bruises peeking out from beneath the edges of his white beard. Rough red scrapes upon his gnarled hands. Smears of blood, though whose was not clear. Fallen links of chain twisted on the floor near the settings in the wall. A faint burnt odor lingering in the air.

Loki stared. Odin, his adoptive father, now broken, fallen, defeated, as if he had been nothing at all. Odin, his magic already fading from the air of the room, Gungnir lying gleaming and abandoned to one side, the light from the open doorway falling across it.

_What had Odin tried to do? What had he thought he was…_

But Loki’s eyes flitted up—farther into the shadows another shape swayed like a sapling, like a drunkard on a stormy night. Like a dying man on a battlefield, about to fall.

Loki rushed to his brother’s side, forgetting the corpse.

“Thor?” he whispered. “Thor?”

Thor did not reply, at least not aloud. His eyes were a pale, unfocused, hazy blue in the shadows, staring into nothing. His lips moved faintly. There were splatters of blood smeared across his knuckles.

Loki took his brother’s hands in his and stroked them until, at last, Thor’s eyes cleared a little and seemed to see him. But he was still far away. Odin’s body was cooling at their feet and Loki felt the last traces of the Allfather’s magic leaching away.

“I was to be king anyway,” Thor murmured, sounding as if he were half asleep, dreaming. Slowly, he blinked, staring down at his father’s fallen body, yet his eyes still seemed blind. "He was trying to kill me."

"I know. I came as quickly as I could. But you are safe now."

Thor blinked again, the distress in his voice rising in the gloom. "He wanted to kill me..."

Loki continued to stroke his brother's hands, making soothing sounds.

This was a catastrophe. The people of Asgard would not stand for regicide. He and Thor—they would have to run, escape, perhaps back to Thor’s allies on Midgard… to the ruins of Jotunheim… the forests of Alfheim where they had hunted long ago… Loki's mind ran through all the options in a blur, in a panic...

No.

Still clasping Thor's hands, Loki pulled him nearer, brushed a kiss against his cheek. Loki was not going to allow that to happen. He was not going to let all of this be stolen from Thor.

“You were to be king, brother, and you will be,” he told him in an urgent whisper just by his ear.

Certainty came to him in a wave of icy cool. He knew exactly what to do.

XVIII.II

Getting everyone to obey him in the immediate aftermath, enough to get up the momentum to keep the rest of it in motion, was the hardest part.

The guards that arrived soon afterward pointed spears at him—at them—and there was nearly chaos when they looked past in the gloom and spotted the shape upon the ground.

The man who spotted it first cried out. The clamor began to spread.

But Loki lifted a hand and spoke with utter calm. "Yes, the Allfather has fallen. The responsibility of the throne belongs to my brother now. And in turn, I will need all of you to carry out your duties and not allow this tragedy to overwhelm you. The stability of our realm is dependent upon you in this moment. Will you rise to your duty?"

All around him, he could see them wavering.

The growing uncertainty of the past months was upon them, the fear in the air. What they needed was steady ground beneath their feet.

And Loki doled out orders in a whirlwind, not allowing time to think.

Some he commanded to bring the litter that would carry Odin's body to be prepared for the funeral. Others he ordered to take word to Bilkskirnir to summon Thor's personal guard, those most loyal to him. To alert the servants to begin preparations for two ceremonies. To locate Frigga and have her brought to the most secure of cells, for her own safety. And, he added as an afterthought, her handmaids as well.

They stared at him in fear and they looked to Thor, and at his nod they obeyed, rushing away to carry out Loki's commands.

Only a pair of guards remained to stand watch over Odin's body until he could be moved.

Thor was still in a daze when Loki approached.

"Thor?"

He made a low sound, glancing at Loki's face and then away again.

"Brother,” Loki said, gentle. “Come with me."

Thor obeyed as well.

Thor's own old chambers were nearest, so Loki led him there, broke away the locks and let them both within. Sat Thor down on the edge of the bed, upon the dusty coverlet, while Loki filled a basin and brought it for Thor to wash the last dried smears of Odin's blood from his hands.

Thor stared mute as the color of rust spread swirling through the water, but Loki was studying him. Feeling for any bindings that Odin might have tried to place—if there had been any, they were no more than tatters now. But something... something had happened. Loki could feel that. He could see that in Thor's motions.

Whatever Odin had tried to do, it had made Thor worse.

Loki indulged in only a moment of fury. He had far more important things to worry about, and Odin had already paid. Loki thought of the broken body and briefly imagined what it must have been like. What must have happened when Thor realized that his father threatened him. He shuddered.

"Brother," Loki said softly, and it took Thor's eyes a moment to raise, sluggish, hazy. Loki gave him a reassuring smile. "I will take care of everything. You needn't worry. You will be a great king, as we have both always known you will be, and I will be there to help you. Everything is going to be all right."

Thor nodded slowly and peered down at his hands again, discolored under the reddish water.

XVIII.III

Tamsin curled uncomfortably in the guest chambers she had been given as a representative of the Ljósálfar in Asgard, and she listened to the stillness, feeling the currents of fear in the air.

She had been in Asgard for two weeks, waiting her turn for an audience with the Allfather to discuss a treaty renegotiation on behalf of the Queen of Alfheim, and at first she had doubted what she was sensing, doubting her own mind. She should not have felt such uneasiness in the eternal realm. But soon, there was no denying it.

She had thought several times about sending a message home, but she doubted anyone would have believed it. _The folk of Asgard think a monster walks among them, though they do not say so aloud. They shiver, they cringe in fear, even the warriors are shaken._ She doubted she would have believed such a message, in the pleasant forests of Alfheim under a crystalline sky.

Tamsin began to believe that it had a taste in the air, a sourness, like old damp, and she tasted it whenever she ventured out of her own chambers, or when one of the servants came in to bring her food or wine.

The last time a servant had come, that evening, the taste had been thick and heavy on the tongue, and she had frowned, the girl's trembling enough to draw her unwilling into compassion for a stranger.

"What has happened?" she asked, not wanting to be part of the panic overtaking the realm, not wanting to be part of its troubles, yet it was she and no one else who had chanced to be there at that moment.

There were tears glistening on the girl’s round cheeks, but her voice was dull with shock, the voice of one for whom some dreadful news has not yet made its presence fully known.

"Odin Allfather is dead."

When Tamsin asked who was to take his place, though, the girl looked more frightened still.

“The thunderer. Thor.”

Tamsin tilted her head aside, confused. Brash he was, certainly, but trustworthy and brave. That was what everyone said of him, the first son of Odin.

“And how did it happen?”

The girl’s shoulders tensed and she stared back, wide-eyed. “What? How did what…”

“The Allfather,” Tamsin said.

The girl began to weep again. She shook her head once, and again more forcefully. “I cannot say.”

Tamsin’s brows drew together as the servant departed with steps soft and uneven, broken by the wavering of her vision, the hiccuping of her breaths, and Tamsin wondered then what she did not know. What the rest of this strange realm knew that she only felt as a taste on the air.

She wondered if somehow the situation was more dire than even she had guessed.


	19. Chapter 19

XIX.I

Loki performed the ceremonies himself.

The first thing he did after emerging from that room was to begin arranging for the passing of authority from father to son, quiet and swift, to leave no chance for qualms to arise, no time for anyone to question or doubt until it was already done. Arranging everything with a steward’s care, obeying all the rules and rites.

Sometimes he caught himself beginning to laugh at the madness of it. He did all he could to avoid thinking of the bloody smear that had been left of Odin. He did not think of Frigga alone in her cell at all.

In two days, all was ready for the funeral.

The pyre was built high, the ship weighted with treasure until it sat low among the dark waves, and all along the shore people were gathered, faceless in the shadows, garbed in black and dark colors, with the only light glinting off the guards and warriors in their armor paying their own tribute to the fallen king.

Loki recited the eulogy, all the things that had to be said. Beside him, Thor stood staring at the ship where it shifted in the shallow waters. He said nothing at all, his mouth pulled into a frown. The haze filming over his eyes. Ever since Odin had done whatever he had done, it had never quite cleared.

Above them, the skies were a deep, heavy grey.

Before nightfall, the smoke from the burning rose in a great pillar, through which two ravens could be seen spiraling into the invisible distance.

And when it was over, the only ones who dared approach them were four figures, emerging out of the crowd, hesitant. Sif was the one who spoke first.

"Thor," she said, looking at him with worry and sorrow. "Loki. You have our deepest condolences on your loss."

Loki nodded, thanked her.

"And we wish to do whatever we can to assist in what must follow. We are here for you. For both of you."

Nods and murmurs of agreement all around, from the other three, who were looking at them with a similar apprehension.

And Loki could not think of a reason not to take their offer—

"No," Thor muttered, breaking his long silence.

Loki's brows drew together as he looked over at his brother, whose face was like a dark cloud. "What? Why not?" He vaguely remembered seeing an argument break out among Thor and his friends some days before, but it had not ended badly and he had put it from his mind. Thor never held grudges long, and probably he had forgotten it within the hour.

"They do not trust me,” Thor said. “They told me so before. They think something is wrong with me."

Apparently, Thor's grudge held. And the haze was growing deeper, more complete. Loki was aware of the subtle shift of Thor's shoulder, his hand moving toward the hammer that hung from his belt.

His heart was suddenly racing.

"Thor..." 

"They want to kill me, just as Father did."

Loki put a gentle hand to Thor's arm, holding him steady before he could move forward. "Thor, wait. Just... just tell me what you want done with them. You needn't do a thing. They are beneath you now. Let me take care of this."

Loki could feel a tremble of tension pass through Thor's body.

At last he sagged. "Send them away," he muttered. "I do not wish to see them again."

When Thor had turned and shambled from their presence, Loki's eyes flitted between the other four. Fandral's shocked face. The sweat beading on Hogun's brow.

"I think you should do as he says," Loki hissed. "Be elsewhere, and do not come near him."

"But... Loki, he is not well," Sif stammered.

"I know!" Loki said even more quietly. "And I will fix it! Just stay away and don't try to interfere. I will fix this."

Dumbly, she nodded, eyes wide, and then she reached out for the others' hands to pull them with her. "Come," she said. "We go."

Loki waited until they had slipped into the crowd still dissipating into the night, and then he turned and hurried away in the direction Thor had gone.

XIX.II

They spent that night in Bilskirnir.

It seemed only right, for a last night before Thor would become king, to spend it quietly in the home they had made their own rather than the palace that belonged to the entire realm, but returning there was yet somehow eerie.

On Loki's orders, servants had been packing Thor's and his belongings into crates and carting them to the palace for some time already, and aside from a last few furtive shadows crossing the floor, the place was empty, hollowed out into bare bones.

But the bedroom had been made ready, a welcoming fire lit in the hearth, a bottle of wine waiting upon the table.

(Thor no longer ate, but sometimes he still drank: a mouthful of water here, a few sips of ale there, like a habit he had not noticed he was continuing. Though the alcohol seemed to have no effect on him anymore either.)

"So how do you feel about tomorrow, brother?" Loki asked as he helped Thor undress for bed, ready with a nightshirt and robe after a cursory glance for any new bruises. He tied the belt about Thor's waist and straightened, giving Thor a little smile. "We have both been waiting for this day a long time."

Thor was frowning at him, brow knitted, sad. Loki could feel him thinking. "But you don't want me to be king."

Loki's chest ached. "That was a long time ago. We've both changed since then."

"You hate me," Thor muttered toward the floor.

"I don't," Loki insisted, and he reached to put a hand beneath Thor's chin, lifting his eyes so Loki could look into them. "I love you, and I always have. No matter what I did. No matter what I said. I vow it."

Thor's arms lifted to hold him in return, and Loki leaned closer, meaning to brush a kiss across his cheek.

But Thor turned his head, pressing their mouths together, and to Loki it felt like a bolt of lightning. He pulled back with a gasp.

Except Thor’s grip tightened and he tugged Loki toward him again. And Loki let him, lips going slack as Thor's did, feeling their softness, the need in Thor's kiss.

Loki's eyes squeezed shut, wetness sneaking out to soak his lashes, and it was like he was burning, arms tightening their hold, letting Thor deepen the kiss, letting... taking...

It was entirely wrong. He had not ever… he swore he hadn’t… his own brother, his kin, the one he'd loved since his earliest memories, the one he'd admired, gleaming like gold, everything he'd ever wanted. The wrongness of it burned him, with his own inadequacy and unworthiness. His own rage, so strong it ached in his chest. The wrongness of having his own brother in his arms and how he craved it. It hurt like a blow to the belly. It burned.

They fell into bed still kissing, huddled together under the blankets like the children they had once been. Just an embrace—slithering out of nightshirts, Loki unwilling to give up the taste of Thor's mouth for even a moment as they molded themselves together, just to _be_ together, skin against skin—but it was everything.

"I love you," he promised again and again, and Thor answered with sighs and moans and whimpers, pawing at him, unable to be still until Loki held him tight against himself, soothing him with whispers.

He did not even care that Thor's body was not as warm as it once had been, skin slightly cool against his own as he held his brother close until sleep came, chin tucked against Thor’s shoulder.

Through his flesh he could feel the steady murmur of Thor’s heartbeat, and that was all that mattered.

XIX.III

They rode the next morning for the palace, side by side, quiet under a light mist of rain.

The ceremony of Thor's coronation could not be a celebration, too soon after Odin's death, too riddled with that grief. Solemn, Loki had decided when he'd planned it. Not the loud, raucous gathering with all Asgard shouting Thor's name, like it had almost been years ago.

Instead, hours later, the throne room was half-lit, torches gleaming off gold, and those in attendance were the court, the high gods, a smaller, well chosen crowd of citizens and servants and ambassadors of other realms, all gathered under a hush, heads lifted but eyes low.

Once again, it was Loki who spoke, holding out Gungnir to his brother, intoning the words about glory and honor and duty, Thor repeating the vow back to him.

Their voices echoed in the depths of the room.

And afterward, Thor took his place upon the throne, the red draped over his shoulders and the spear clenched in his fist. And surrounded by so much gold, Loki for the first time noticed the pale grey tinge that had spread beneath Thor's skin. The dullness of his hair lank against his shoulders. The dark hollows of his cheeks, his eyes. And he had a vivid memory of years ago, Thor standing before their father, waiting to become king, glowing, joy spilling out of him—

Loki was the first to bow, to go down upon a knee and swear fealty to the realm's new king, his eyes welling, his chest clenched painfully tight.

Thor had always wanted this. And now at last it was his.


	20. Chapter 20

XX.I

Asgard had never had a dark king. This was true no matter what some had whispered during Loki's brief rule, and any who had said it then surely now saw the error of their words.

Asgard had never _before then_ had a dark king, the head of dull gold slouched upon the throne in shadow. The storms constantly looming over the city. The cruelty of his decrees and the darkness of his moods, suspicious and distrustful of anything but immediate obeisance. Any hint of disrespect.

Loki tried to temper Thor's royal decisions as much as he could, standing beside Thor's throne and whispering to him, suggesting, restraining—but he had only so much influence. Thor would not always listen to him, his eyes sometimes flashing to Loki with the same sour distrust, and then often Thor would do the opposite from what he advised, nose scrunching as he waited for Loki to object.

He held his silence in those times, waiting for Thor’s attention to turn from him.

And beyond that, he could not always be there, still trying in every spare moment to find a solution, to seek out some new knowledge that would let him heal Thor once and for all. And there were other things he had to worry about besides.

It was only days before some of Thor's former friends were back, defying Loki's advice to them, determined—and Loki had no choice but to oversee their executions himself, to make sure that they could not try again, could not stick their noses in and truly shatter all of Loki's hopes by some foolish action. He did not enjoy it, the betrayal on their faces, the final broken pleas before the axe fell. He simply could not allow the risk.

And it had to be kinder than what Thor would have done if he had been the one to discover them. Loki had seen that often enough by now. He was not safe from such things himself; he had to protect himself, protect Thor. Anyone else, he had not the pity to spare.

At least he had recently discovered a particular trick that often succeeded in calming Thor down, pulling him back from his rages.

Loki had learned how to do it. The hollow dullness that signaled impending disaster would begin to fill Thor's eyes, and Loki would touch him instead and it would recede. Fingers combing through Thor's hair, caressing his neck—feeling the shallow tremor of his pulse beneath the skin. Or slipping his hands onto Thor's arms, thumbs stroking at the tender insides. Anything, as long as it resulted in his skin upon Thor’s. But touching Thor in a way like a caress was better, whenever he could.

Loki had discovered it one evening, his hand against Thor’s cheek, and the noise he had made was a strange, prolonged whine.

Loki’s brow pinched. “What?”

Thor breathed out, his eyes fluttered, and beneath the wavering lids there was a hint of clarity, of focus. “I can feel that.”

“What do you mean? Why would you not?”

Thor huffed, shook his head just a little. “It’s all dull now.”

Loki repeated the gesture, touching down the side of Thor’s cheek, running his fingers back along his jaw, brushing the soft, cool lobe of his ear. Thor groaned and leaned into it, pressing his face against Loki’s hand.

Heart in his throat, Loki continued to touch him, stroking, making Thor sigh and squirm.

And that was when Thor was calm, already subdued and content beside him. The effect when Thor was upset was all the more jarring, all the more strange.

The first time he had done this little trick in court, he could feel every eye in the room upon him, seeing the intimacy of the gesture. Seeing Loki work some spell upon the dark king of Asgard,  most likely saving more than a few of the lives currently in that room, but only because he chose to. Upon his whim. And doing so by such unthinkable means.

He had kissed Thor's shoulder in response, a thrill running through him, curling cold and slippery in his belly, flaring hot in his veins.

When the two of them strode through shadowed corridors, the people they passed kept their heads low, shoulders hunched forward to make themselves small and unnoticeable, their burdens sagging between suddenly weakened arms. Their skin glistened with sweat, and Loki could smell the terror in it.

Mostly fear of Thor, but some of him as well.

Loki smiled, grim, and wrapped his arm about his brother's waist. It was better that way, better that they be feared, even if it meant the corridors grew emptier every day.

XX.II

Volstagg blanched when he heard the news.

Three executed for treason against the king. Sif, Fandral, Hogun.

He crumpled the message into a ball and threw it upon the hearth fire before Gudrun could spot it, and that night he drowned his sorrow after all the children had gone to bed. His friends had made him stay behind, saying that if it went amiss, they could rely upon him to sort it out. Of course, what they meant was that they would not let him face the risk, when he had a wife and children to support and protect.

He should have told them. He should not have let them go either. The whole time they had been planning it—how to save Thor, how to get him to someplace where he could be healed—Volstagg had only been able to remember how it had been long ago, before Loki was a villain. When the rest of them were just children, and he only a young guard assigned to watch them as they played.

When Loki was just a child as well, thin, dark-haired, sharp-eyed, but small enough that he cried at skinned knees and wanted to be included in everything his brother did and generally made of himself a nuisance to Thor's set of slightly older friends.

The fiercest that little boy had ever been was once, when Thor was injured in a fall, and Loki had been there. Volstagg was certain he would have fought a dragon with his bare hands if it meant protecting his brother, and the well-meant teasing of a few friends had stood no chance. Volstagg had been the one to pull him away, kicking and screaming and clawing and spitting threats, unwilling to back down.

Volstagg remembered it all quite clearly.

He should have warned them. Told them indeed to flee, as Loki had advised them. There would be some other day.

And now there would not, at least for them.

Volstagg finally fell asleep at the table, empty glasses piled up beside him, head on his arm wet with tears.

XX.III

The days, hour after hour of trying to hold back the tide of disaster, were difficult, but Loki had found his ways to endure.

The night were both better and worse.

In the evenings, sometimes, Thor's eyes cleared a little. And as they spoke together in Thor's old rooms, closed off from the rest of the realms with the rain tapping forever on the windows, the soft rumble of thunder like a distant purr, Loki sometimes felt happy.

Sometimes Thor looked at him, hesitant, almost afraid, and then Loki could lean against him, touch him, kiss him, and watch Thor's brow smooth over. Murmur to him and hear Thor answer.

But then, eventually, Loki would have to sleep, and Thor would lie down beside him.

And Thor's nightmares had grown worse.

Not long after Thor's coronation, Loki woke one night to his moaning, his thrashing against the bed, and he had turned over—exhausted, so weary he could barely think—to shove Thor to snap him out of it.

The blow woke him well, his brother's fist slamming against his torso knocking the air from him. Another swiftly followed it, before Loki could react.

"Thor!" Loki tried to scramble away out of range, succeeded in tangling himself in the bedclothes. "Thor, stop! Thor, it's only me!"

He could not make out any words among the growls and snarls that answered. He struggled. He shoved. Thor struck back harder, and Loki felt ribs crack, felt the gasping pressure of a lung being pierced, and his head went light.

If Thor did not stop... Loki would have to do it again. The thought made him frantic. He did not want to. He could not bear it, Thor's blood spilling out on him once more. Thor’s body cold under his hands. He could not bear it again.

The growls resolved at last into words.

"Trickster, betrayer," Thor snarled, a chant, a drone while he lashed out over and over. "You hurt me, you hurt me, you..."

Loki ceased trying to ward off any more blows and did the only thing he could, reaching for Thor's body instead, caressing, gentling.

"Brother, please," he forced out through the pain in his chest. Another strike, another rib, Loki flinching but not removing his hands. "Brother, don't..."

Thor slowed. Hesitated. Finally stopped, a dreadful confusion seeping into his eyes.

Loki healed himself, unwilling to let anyone else see him gasping, broken vessels darkening in patches under the skin of his chest, above his broken ribs. Even after it was done, the phantoms of pain flickered through his breaths.

He healed the scratches and contusions his struggles had left on Thor's arms as well, while Thor wept and refused to look at him.

He curled around his brother from behind when he was done, so that he might whisper in Thor's ear and try to comfort him.

"It's all right, brother," he whispered. "It's going to be all right."

Thor sobbed, paying him no attention, his breaths rasping and strained.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to.”

“You haven’t. You won’t. It’s all right.”

Thor tried to curl tighter, the sobs shaking him.

Loki held him, shushed him, ran hands down his shivering shoulders, oddly aware of the bones. But nothing seemed to make a difference. Nothing soothed him.

The feeling of helplessness was perhaps the worst part.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *looks at date* I had originally meant to get the whole thing posted by today because reasons, but I guess posting this chapter in particular is almost as good. For the one without whom this fic would never have been written.

XXI.I

Loki had run out of options. He had nowhere else to turn. He had scanned through every reference he could find, paged through every ancient tome. The only resource he had not availed himself of yet...

He found an hour to sneak away, steeled himself as he slipped into his old chambers, tried to calm his heart as he prepared the simple little illusion to project into her cell.

"Mother," he said when he saw through its eyes.

The place he had her imprisoned was comfortable enough, surely, with all the luxuries he could supply, but he knew he still should feel ashamed for having locked his own mother away. He didn't, quite, but he knew he should.

Frigga was instantly on her feet when she saw him. "Loki!" she said, both stern and surprised, angry and filled with dread. "Loki, what has happened? What have you done? Tell me!"

Loki took an unconscious step back—but, of course, she could not touch him, and the illusion would dissolve if she tried.

Still, he floundered for words. "I... many things have happened, Mother. The guards told you of Odin's passing, did they not?"

Frigga's lips pressed together in a thin line and she nodded, but she did not let show her grief. He hadn't expected she would. She had been a queen for longer than he'd been alive.

"I'm sorry I didn't get there in time to stop it."

Her eyes stayed fixed upon him, and he could not read whether she believed him or not. He was not sure himself. He took a breath, and another.

He had to say it. He had to tell her if she was to help him. He fidgeted, hands clasped before himself, picking at the skin, and the illusion did likewise.

"Something did happen," he said.

Frigga gave him a tiny nod. _Go on_.

"Months ago, on Midgard. Thor... Thor died. I killed him, in one of our battles. But I brought him back. You must understand, I found a way and I brought him back at once, and... and I need your help, now, because he is still not well. I don't know what I did wrong, what part of the spell didn't work, but he... he isn't well. At first it was just little changes, but now he has stopped eating, and sometimes when he is angry he does terrible things. You were right, I should have come to you sooner, but I was sure I could manage it myself, and I didn’t want you to..."

Frigga had begun trembling while he spoke, while he rambled and stuttered, and she sank down onto the little cushioned settee, as if her legs could not hold her, and she put her hand to her mouth, eyes squeezing shut, bending over as if he'd struck her a deadly blow.

"Mother?"

She shook her head and did not answer.

"It's not... Thor is alive, and he will be all right if you will but help me."

Another shake of the head. She wept, quietly but without stopping, her soft sobs grating on Loki’s senses like nothing else in the world.

“Mother, stop,” he said, teeth gritted.

She did not, seeming to take no notice of his words.

“Mother…”

More minutes passed, and the illusion of Loki in her cell paced and fretted and clenched his fists, unable to touch, unable to do anything.

“Stop it!" he cried out at last, demanding, and he went on, his voice growing louder with each plea. "Stop crying and tell me how to fix this! It was just a mistake! I never wanted him to die, I only wanted to defeat him! Mother, please, tell me what to do!”

There was infinite sadness in her eyes, on her tear-streaked face, when at last she looked up at him, and her voice was soft, gentle, ravaged.

“Loki. It cannot be undone. It cannot be _fixed._ You will have to let him go.”

Loki stared at her, aghast. “ _No_.”

“I wish it were otherwise,” she told him, with the saddest of smiles. “Those who have perished cannot return, and trying will only bring more grief. You’re not the first to think it could be done. But whatever sort of life it is that is restored to them... I’m sorry, Loki. There is nothing I can do to help you. You must let him go.”

Loki continued to stare.

She could not be telling him to let Thor die. She could not. He burned with sudden rage, his vision blurring with it, his head throbbing. How could she—their own mother—tell him to do that? How could she love Thor so little? It had been one thing when she had abandoned _him_. He had deserved that. But for her to give up on _Thor..._

“No,” he repeated, nails digging into his flesh at his sides. “I will not. Never. I will fix this. I will bring him back. I will make him well again.”

Frigga’s mouth had opened to speak again, perhaps to plead with him, at the moment he broke the connection.

In that cell, the illusion of him surely shimmered away in a rush of green light.

Before his eyes, the vision of her, the familiar gold of her hair and dress, faded away like a mist into darkness.

XXI.II

Loki had run out of options. Or so he had thought.

In the hours since he had spoken to his mother, a thought had been growing in the back of his mind.

Frigga had said others had tried it, brought their loved ones back. And it seemed they had faced a similar outcome. But surely there were things they had not tried. And in confessing his own tale to Frigga, something had occurred to him. One thing that could well have been responsible for all of the difficulties he had faced, and something _he_ had not done to amend it.

Each time Thor died, it had been violent. Brutal. Cruel. Perhaps that had left a stain upon his soul, a stain that left him volatile with half-remembered pain. And if that was so…

Perhaps if it was gentle, and done out of love, it would be different.

The idea of killing his brother again made Loki ill. But it would surely be different for him as well. There would be no blood, no struggle. And surely he could endure it if it meant getting Thor back, fully healed and well.

So he gathered the supplies he needed and hid them in Thor's chambers, and he planned out the hour.

His plans, however, went awry before they even began, for Thor returned in a state of disarray that made the hairs on the back of Loki's neck stand on end.

His clothes were torn and smeared with blood. His eyes were frantic, his mouth hung slack as he panted for breath. As soon as he saw Loki, he rushed toward him and enfolded him in a rough embrace.

Loki relaxed against him, tried to breathe, smoothed a hand down Thor’s back. Tried not to panic. "What happened?"

"I don't know," Thor murmured.

"Then what is wrong?"

Thor's eyes squeezed shut and he squirmed, as if he could not voice it. "I don't know. I need you. Brother... touch me."

Loki tried to pull back—just to look at him—but Thor whined and tugged him close again.

"Please, I don't feel anything but you. Everything else is dull, like there is nothing, like it’s not really there. Except you. I don’t feel anything else. Only you."

Loki tried to comply, running his hands over Thor’s shoulders, his arms, his neck, but in only moments Thor was shaking his head.

“It’s not enough,” Thor muttered.

Loki’s brow twisted, uncertain what Thor meant.

“More,” Thor insisted. "I need you."

Loki’s heart began to truly race as Thor pulled him toward the bed and began to fumble at the fastenings of their clothes, fingers awkward, a frown tugging at his mouth. Thor grumbled, made noises of frustration.

"Let me help you," Loki said, his voice thin on breath he couldn’t catch.

So far they had done no more than kiss and embrace each other in the night, and Loki had not thought about it much. He had not let himself. It was intimate, it was far more than brotherly... but it was unnameable, something in between and therefore not forbidden. And it had helped Thor when nothing else seemed to, so Loki did not need to think on it any deeper than that.

But now Thor's actions seemed pointed, his desperation of a new sort, and Loki pulled off Thor's clothes and then his own in a sort of trance, disbelieving of what he was doing. Where this was headed. What Thor seemed to mean when he asked for _more_.

It ended with Thor sprawled out on his back gazing up at him, and he was... beautiful. So beautiful, so strong. Pale and with a haze over the blue of his eyes. Fragile, tender in a way Loki had never perceived before. His elder brother, vulnerable before him and no one else.

Thor's knees were lifted, his legs spread, the half-firm arousal between them. Bruises all up and down the insides of his thighs. Across his belly, soft, cool, sunken. Deep patterns of discolorations in the thick muscle of his torso, visible beneath the grey tinge. And Loki wanted to touch them all. Wanted to kiss him everywhere. Thor’s chest and throat bared, arched, offered up, and between heavy panting breaths he groaned deeply. A sound like desolation, like he was lost.

"Brother," he moaned. "I want you. I need to feel you at last. Don’t leave me again. Please… please, take me."

Loki crawled up his body. His brother. The one being he could not possibly desire, in all the realms. Thor, the perfection that had tormented him for centuries. He had never...

He did want this, with a sudden painful need, like a bonfire.

And when he did it, it felt the way Loki had wanted it to feel. The way victory should have felt. Loki's heart pounded, painfully, as he thrust inside.

This was what he had wanted.

It was so easy, their bodies fitting together as if they'd been made to do this, to be joined. Every touch new and immediately familiar, every touch wringing groans and shivers from them both. His brother, who he had loved since his earliest memories.

And at the same time, Thor's chest was rising and falling in gasps, face twisted so that Loki could not tell if it might be in pleasure or anger or pain. He hesitated, slowed, his hands stroking Thor's face, thumbing at the tears spilling down his cheeks and the quiver of his wet lip.

"Thor? Are you..."

The noise Thor made then was a groan of demand, and he grabbed tight to Loki with all his limbs, groping blindly at his body. "No, don’t stop. Please, I need you..."

Face hot, Loki slid back in, mouth falling slack as it made Thor arch and moan again, and Loki bent his head to kiss him, drinking in the noises.

"Why did you make me fight you? I never wanted to fight you," Thor whimpered between kisses, tears smearing against Loki's cheek, and his hands gripped miserably while Loki wrapped his arms around Thor's shoulders, holding him tight. "Why did you only want to hurt me? Why did you do that to us?"

Loki's voice was too choked in his throat to answer, and his eyes squeezed tight at the feel of Thor shuddering around him, the feel of his cool spill between them, Thor's mouth soft beneath his as he reached his own aching release.

Those had been Thor’s last words to him before Loki killed him. Pleading, vowing that he did not want that fight.

And this was how Loki had wanted it to feel when he plunged the knife in. This was what victory was supposed to be. He had wanted Thor to be his. That was what he had wanted all along, and he had never known.

XXI.III

They lay together afterward for a long while, in silence.

Loki was lost in thought, what they'd just done reverberating through him and causing his breath and heart to catch.

He had wanted that. And so had Thor. After everything that had happened between them. Years of resentment and violence.

Loki glanced over at him, at Thor lying there staring unblinking at the ceiling, lashes still glued together into dark clumps.

"Brother?" Loki whispered, rolling to lie at Thor's side, tentative fingers stroking down the damp, cool skin of Thor's chest.

He had the strangest feeling that what they had just done should have made things better. If that had been what Thor wanted... Thor had come to him for succor, and Loki had given it, wrapped tight around him, feelings he could not have spoken laid bare in the heat of his touches. It should have helped. Somehow. It should have fixed things between them.

"Brother, do you feel any better now?"

Thor shuddered and squirmed, squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

The spot beneath Loki's hand at that moment was the place the knife had gone in. There was no mark there, no scar, but Loki knew it as his fingers traced across it. And guilt racked him as the sounds of Thor's quiet breath turned shaky, muffled only slightly by the sound of the storm outside.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay (again). I think I'm back now.

XXII.I

The next morning, nothing seemed much different, as Loki had expected. He woke to find Thor’s eyes already open, gazing up dully at the ceiling.

“Brother?” Loki said, reaching over to run a hand along Thor's  shoulder.

Sluggish, Thor turned his head to return Loki’s gaze. Vaguely wary, but no more than that.

As Loki studied his face, he had an urge to ask if Thor remembered what they had done, but he couldn't force the words past his throat.

The knowledge was still gnawing in his belly, somehow heavy and hollow at once, the thought of the things they’d done, the things he’d discovered he’d long wanted. The things he had refused to see, and the things he had done to Thor because of it, because of his own unwillingness to grasp it. The thought made him almost lightheaded.

But Thor seemed to suffer no such difficulty, merely sighing and pushing himself up out of bed as the moments slipped by.

In the gloom of Thor’s chambers, Loki got up beside him, dressed, readied himself for another day like all those previous had been, the grim routine of it, and it was not until they emerged into the somewhat brighter light of the throne room that Loki spotted the first subtle sign of change.

The fog in Thor’s eyes was no longer just the softness of a half-focused stare. Now it was a pale film over the blue, and beneath it, pupils gone slightly mismatched, one just a little larger than the other and shrinking no smaller in the light. It made that eye look darker, deeper, and the other nearly blind.

Loki did his best not to react to this, to show no sign of alarm, but he was not sure he succeeded.

That day, Thor’s volatility took a turn toward confusion, doubt, even greater distrust.

And then, as the hour drew on toward night, anticipation. Fidgeting, looking away like he’d been caught when their eyes chanced to meet.

That night, Thor pleaded for him again, and Loki could not refuse him, but he also could not bear to spend too long looking into those pale eyes. Instead he dipped his head, lay in his brother’s arms with guilt heavy in the back of his mind. Thor’s fingers tangled, tightened in his hair in spasms as Loki mouthed against the cool skin of his chest, sucked on tender little nubs, making Thor gasp.

At the end of the evening, they lay panting together, Thor clutching tight to him.

The next day was worse, and the next night as well.

Confusion deepening and turning swiftly to anger while Loki stood loyal at his side but proving too slow to explain, his tongue tangled upon his own fear, his own uncertainty.

Waves of tension rolling through his body as they lay together at night, like a slow-building fire, and Loki often found himself holding his breath, kissing at the hollow of Thor’s shoulder, silently willing Thor to calm again.

Once, Thor pushed him away in the middle of their lovemaking, snarling and striking out at him with fists and words, and Loki scrambled back, putting space between them, sheets rumpling in the darkness.

Pale eyes blinked, and Thor began to tremble, as if his own actions had frightened him. He whimpered, a sound of utter confusion. It took no more than that for Loki to crawl back, sliding into the space beside him, uncaring that they were both still slick in spots from their half-finished coupling.

“Brother? Talk to me.”

“I don’t understand why you are doing this.”

Loki blinked. “What am I doing?”

Visibly, Thor tried to gather himself. His breathing sped, tears fell from his eyes.

“I don’t know… you are trying to deceive me. You don’t look at me and I know you are only going to turn against me again...”  

Loki frowned, uncertain, in the midst of his own confusion. “Thor, I won’t. I won’t.”

Thor gazed back at him, mouth turned down.

“I know I have given you many reasons to think so in the past, but I won’t.”

Loki could do nothing to prove it, so he merely waited for Thor to subside. Wiped away tears from Thor’s cheeks with his fingertips until Thor turned his face stubbornly aside, and spooned up behind him when Thor curled up and drew the covers up over himself. Loki could do nothing but wait until Thor surrendered to sleep, feeling himself grow even more restless and unsettled but lying unmoving with his arm around his brother so as not to disturb him.

Something was happening to Thor—something more, some new change—and Loki did not know how to face it. He did not know what to do.

XXII.II

Tamsin shivered as the thunder rumbled low, trembling in the foundations of the palace and shivering through the floors so that she could feel it in her feet, in her bones, in her fingers. She'd barely ventured out of the room in days, finding it safer to wait where she was, to hope the strangeness passed. But now she gathered her courage on the back of her impatience.

The servants were frightened, scurrying through the corridors and sticking near the walls, never meeting her eyes. And she was almost certain there were fewer of them than there had been at the start of her visit.

Even the guards were very obviously nervous.

She tried to speak to them, tried to ask what it was they feared, but all were unwilling to answer, staring back at her from beneath their gleaming helms. A few shook their heads in silent apology.

Only one twitched a grin. "You should go home, Elf. You don't want the king to answer you now."

Tamsin found herself blinking in shock. She had not thought to leave. That night, she wandered the rest of the guest wing, knocking on doors, speaking to those who pulled them them cautiously open.

In the earliest hours of the next morning she fled, she and all the others she could find from other realms, huddling under their hoods from the now-constant rain and stepping quickly past each dark window, avoiding possibly unfriendly eyes.

It was strange to admit that she'd waited so long, strange to look around and realize she was not the only one who had somehow believed things must get better, that they could not be as bad as they seemed.

There were several other Elves in the group, two or three Vanir, a small delegation of Dwarves.

The guardian of Bifrost sighed when he saw them but began opening the gateway to each realm in turn, and Tamsin admitted to herself that she had been a bit worried about that. They could have been barred from leaving. The guardian himself might have tried to do them harm—they were none of them warriors, armed with no more than a knife or in the Dwarves' case a small hand axe. Certainly they could not have faced the renowned Heimdall.

The rainbow of light swirling away made relief rush through her, one group departing after another, though the Elves were last.

Tamsin took the opportunity to ask her question.

"Guardian," she said, after clearing her throat. "Are you aware of what has been occurring in the palace?"

Heimdall looked pained. "Yes."

"Well, then... why have you not done anything?"

It was strange to see those golden eyes go dim with defeat, with hopelessness. "If there were anything I could do, I would. But there is not. So I will remain at my post until there is no more bridge to guard or realm to defend. Now, are you ready to return to your own realm, ambassador?"

Tamsin swallowed heavily and nodded. "Beyond ready."

The first breath she took when she was once again under the bright, blue skies of Alfheim... it was the lightest she had ever been.

XXII.III

That morning, Loki woke to an empty bed and a grim feeling in the air. The sky through the windows was a deep, ominous grey, the light barely enough to see by.

"Thor?" he called, expecting no answer and receiving none but a low, distant rumble of thunder, and clambering out of bed—slumber still clinging to his eyelids—and cursing as he stumbled over Mjolnir lying askew upon the floor.

For a moment he stood in the middle of the empty room, feeling the chill of the damp air upon his skin, before quickly dressing, trying to put the rush of worry out of his mind. Trying to slip back into the routine of their days of late.

He stepped out into the halls of the palace, wandered down them, wondering where Thor might be at that hour. He slipped briefly into the kitchens, snatching up a small, crusty loaf with some butter and cheese to nibble at when his stomach began to grumble, and when he left again he was aware of the hushed sounds of shuffling feet trying to keep out of his way.

It had been a while since he had wandered alone, such that he did not have to put all his attention into keeping his eyes upon his brother. And as he listened to the resounding taps of his own footsteps… it all felt different. Empty, hollow as a rind, as if the palace were some ancient thing with all its life spilled. Sconces on the walls barely able to fight the gloom.

It was oddly disorienting, finding Asgard changed around him, like looking into the shadowy corners for his old memories and finding them gone, the walls defaced.

He wandered for some time, poking his head into the empty silence of throne room and council chamber, gazing down from balcony at the empty training yard, all mud and mist. Worry grew within him, an edge of tension in his steps, his motions.

Thor was nowhere to be found.

An hour later, Loki frowned as he stepped into the dark, silent space of their private dining room, empty and unused for weeks, but it was the only place he had not looked. There seemed no point, no reason. Thor would not possibly be there.  

But now there was some sense that alerted him as he peered within. Perhaps some small sound as he gazed into the darkness. A little flame lit above his outstretched palm when he whispered the word.

It lit a shape huddled on the floor, and the glint of silver. Something wet and glistening.

"Thor?"

For a moment the blond head turned. And removed from its shadow Loki could see the mangle of red folded against his body, the blade interrupted in the middle of sawing deeper into the splayed-open flesh of his arm. Blood dripped from it. Muscle tore as he pulled the knife back, stabbed it in again.

"It doesn't work," Thor muttered as Loki cried out and scrambled to his knees, tearing the knife from Thor's hand, frantically trying to stem the sluggish flow of blood with his own palms while he summoned up magic to heal the deep slashes, the brutal cuts.

Thor tried to snatch the knife back with a growl. "It does not do what I say. I must find out why."

"What? Thor, no," Loki spat through his confusion, holding the knife out of Thor's reach and then tossing it across the room when Thor still eyed it. "What are you talking about? What are you doing?"

"It does not _work_ ," Thor snarled, an edge of growing frustration in his voice.

" _What_ doesn't work?"

Shaking him off, Thor lifted his hand, his bleeding arm. Fingers open and slightly curled. Loki blinked at his hand, frowning, uncomprehending but something about the gesture making his pulse race.

"Mjolnir does not come. I have been calling her and she does not come."

Thor lowered his arm angrily, and then with his fingers began delving into the wet, red sinews of the offending part. Prying them wider.

Loki stared in shock, then shook himself out of it, reaching and grabbing both Thor's wrists to stop him. "Thor, no, wait," he said. "Let me heal you. Please."

"No, I need to..."

"Thor, there is nothing wrong with your arm. It's not you," Loki said. His mind raced, thoughts scrambling onto his frantic tongue. "It's... it's the hammer. It's broken. That's all. It's not you."

"Broken?" Thor's mouth twisted as he said it.

Loki did not want to think about worthiness or unworthiness. Nor did he want to wonder what other causes might sever the bond that had long existed between Thor and his weapon. After everything that had happened… perhaps Mjolnir had begun to sense it, the change in him. The foreign magic Loki had been pouring into him for months. All the deaths around them. Any part of it might have been the reason.

Loki did not want to consider any of it. But he definitely did not want Thor to do so. He remembered his brother’s misery, bereft upon Midgard, tugging upon a handle that would no longer move for him. Loki would not let him suffer that grief again.

With great certainty in his voice, as convincing as he knew how to be, he went on. "Yes. There must have been some flaw in it from long ago, when the Dwarves forged it. It is their fault. We will make them fix it now."

Thor scowled, eyes narrow upon him, suspicious. "You are lying to me."

"I'm not," Loki said, with a gentle smile as he continued silently healing the torn flesh beneath his fingers, without Thor's noticing. "I promise you, brother. You will have your hammer back."


	23. Chapter 23

XXIII.I

The Dwarves refused.

A message had been penned, demanding that the best of craftsmen come to fix the broken hammer, to repair the flaws in the work done for Asgard an age ago, and it had been sent off with a wide-eyed courier eager to serve.

A message was received in return, the same courier coming back swiftly, and the message was read out. The Dwarves refused, stating that there had been no such flaws, and that if there was any difficulty now, much of an age later, the issue must lie in the wielder.

Loki had been there when the reply was received, and he had done what he could, but Thor's answer—incomprehension, his brow furrowed, his fists clenching upon the arms of the throne.

And then, like a spark of icy fire, it was rage, feeding upon itself, into a furious blaze. Cold and deadly, pouring off him in dark waves like a shadow.

"If they will not fix it, then they must be made to pay," he said, leaning forward, shoulders hunched, face in shadow. "If they do not respect Asgard's might anymore, we must demonstrate it for them again."

The few nobles and councilors who remained had bowed with shoulders trembling. And the word was sent out all across Asgard, calling for all warriors to come at the command of their king.

That night, Thor sat listless, his eyes dull and his form sagging, as Loki fussed around him.

Ever since Mjolnir had abandoned him, Thor had grown angrier, more difficult to reason with, but Loki still tried, still touched him, soothed him, coaxed him back from the edge of violence.

"Thor, are you sure this is what you want to do?" he asked.

Thor did not turn his face to look at him, only scowled at the floor. "You told me it was their fault."

"And it is. But Dwarves are better bought with gold than fear, and we have hardly yet tried to negotiate with them."

"I don't want to _negotiate_ ," Thor spat.

"You know you can leave that part to me—"

Thor's hand shot out, and Loki's arm was caught in an iron grip that dragged him closer, closer to the pale, hollow eyes that stared through him.

"I will not. You are a _liar_ and I _do not_ trust you."

Loki tried to steel himself, tried to ignore the pain of Thor’s hand upon him, wrenching at the bones. “Thor, you cannot possibly think...”

“You had dealings with them. I know not what you would do, what depths you would scrape to harm me.”

 _Dealings_. Dealings in which Loki had always suffered, always lost. Thor knew how much Loki had disliked the Dwarves ever since then. But the way Thor was looking at him, further protest seemed futile.

Loki looked away, no longer tugging back against Thor’s hand, dread and surrender seeping through him.

XXIII.II

Not long after, Thor had him shoved up against the wall of his chambers, grip tight upon his throat, holding him pinned as he struggled. Loki's eyes widened and his heart thumped in his chest as Thor growled.

“If you truly love me, you will do as I say.”

Loki nodded in quick agreement, but he still was not expecting to be dragged toward the bed. Nor the command to shed his garments, to assist Thor with his. He was not expecting the angry, petulant glare as Thor lay down and told him what he wanted.

“You have been promising to make me feel better and you haven't,” Thor said.

It was strange, how it felt, trying to obey and yet feeling his own fear swelling within the inevitable excitement.

This was not the brother he had grown up with, warm and bright and forever above him, unattainable, perfect.

This was Thor in darkness. This was Thor, writhing beneath him and then growing frustrated and overturning them, shoving him down onto his back, climbing atop, sliding down without hesitation. Hips rocking in a haphazard rhythm as he rode, and Loki could not help but gaze at his body. The bruises just visible in the room's dim light. The sickly hollows around his clavicles. The fury in his pale eyes. The sheen of chill sweat darkening the hair beneath his arms, and the scent of him filling Loki’s nostrils, familiar and changed, a sourness to it.

Loki's nerves were alight, his body eager, his mind in a panic. He wanted to reach out, to pull Thor to him and insist that he had been trying to heal him, that he loved Thor, that he would have done anything to make this all better. Yet he couldn’t, heart in his throat.

Thor's groans and sighs slid along his spine, raising gooseflesh, and he did everything Thor told him. Gave Thor everything he asked for, the ferocity of Thor's demands making him shiver. The way Thor huffed at his obedience, clawed at Loki's sides leaving scratches that burned.

“Touch me,” Thor demanded finally, and Loki lowered his hand between their bellies.

Thor’s organ had stiffened only partly, but as Loki thumbed at the wetness at its tip, Thor threw his head back, moaning. Thor came still only half hard, and his spill was viscous on Loki’s hand as he finished within him, the feeling a strange kind of pleasure, a dread-thick shudder all through his limbs.

Thor stared at him afterward and would not kiss him. Pushed him away, relenting only when Loki fetched warm water and cloth and bathed his skin, cleaning up the traces. Relenting only enough for Loki to slip into bed beside him afterward and sneak close, wrapping around him.

He felt scoured, aching in a way beyond the inconsequential injuries Thor had given him, and he hated more than ever the loss of Thor’s warmth. Barely a trace left of what had once been a furnace heat burning forever inside him, enough to make a younger Loki shove him away for blessed air, blessed space.

Now it was nearly gone.

He needed to fix this. He had to make his brother well again. He could not let another day pass.

XXIII.III

And he knew what he had to do.

The one thing he had not yet tried. The solution he had thought of after their mother had told him to give up on Thor, to let him die.

He could not give up. He _could not_ let his brother go. He had to succeed. And this was the one thing he had not tried.

Loki lay there, waiting, as Thor tossed and turned for quite some time.

This time he would make sure there was no pain, no violence to twist Thor’s spirit. He would make sure Thor was not aware of any of it. He would go slowly, take care with every motion.

When Thor finally lay still and peaceful in his slumber, Loki waited just a few minutes longer, breathing slowly to calm his own nerves. He murmured a brief sleeping spell, to ensure that Thor would not wake.

And then he knelt astride Thor's unmoving body and closed his hands around Thor’s throat so that there would be no blood either.

He tightened his fingers. Jaw clenching as he squeezed, staring into the dark cavern of Thor's slack mouth.

His arms began to cramp before he could make himself let go. He was not aware of his own harsh breathing, the burning in his own eyes. The tingling in his fingers where he had felt Thor's pulse slowing and stuttering to a halt.

When it was done he leaned down, put his ear to Thor's chest, shuddered at the silence within, bereft of the drumskin echo his heartbeat had become. He pressed his lips to the cool, grey skin as well, upon Thor's sternum, leaving wet droplets behind. Up to kiss his beloved face, stroke his hair.

"This time, brother," he murmured. "This time."

He did not delay longer than that but got to work, every muscle in his body tense with concentration, devoting all his care and attention to doing everything precisely right. Afterward he waited for Thor’s eyes to open. Surely this time there would be no haze in them, no darkness.

He fell asleep waiting, and he dreamed of a boy with sun-bright hair and star-blue eyes and a warm golden laugh, who held his hand against his fears when the storms came.

When he woke, Thor was sitting up watching him, casting a shadow across him.


	24. Chapter 24

XXIV.I

The armies of Asgard mustered on the field before the bridge, its glow the only light in the dark of the day. Gleaming on shield and helm. Overhead, veins of lightning ran across the dull bruise of the sky, and rain poured down in fits upon the ranks stretched out as far as the eye could see.

The fear that had suffocated the city had turned into something else. As soon as the call for war spread wide, it had turned to a maddened fervor, and the warriors who had come at the king's call were infused with it, infected. There would be no more fear, when the most frightful thing to be seen was the might of Asgard sweeping down upon its enemies.

Every warrior gripped his weapon and felt the bloodlust rise in his belly as Thor stood before them, rallying them with a few words and a call to follow. In his hand, not a hammer but an axe, massive and sharp, its edge glinting.

There were some among that assemblage who welcomed this, showing teeth. A bloodier weapon for their king to wield, a tool of death alone; they approved whole-heartedly. They were led by a fearsome god whose rages brought lightning. A ruler whose anger swirled dark in the skies and rained destruction down, heedless of any thought of death or pain. They knew that their fate would lead into glory in the wake of such a king.

And it was the nature of the Aesir to live up to the example set them by their leaders.

They gnashed their teeth in readiness, for it was Thor who led them, he who called the storms, who stood now lit by a bolt of silver in the midst of darkness, crying aloud, rallying them to follow. Every eye gleamed with ferocious determination.

Above, in the darkness, one could just spot the swirling shadow of hundreds of winged points of black, their screams foretelling carnage, and the warriors smiled at the sight.

They welcomed war, and they had no fear, and the sound of their roar in unison could have deafened the entire sky as they tramped toward the waiting bridge.

XXIV.II

Loki felt a chill as he crossed it, half a pace behind his brother.

It had not worked, and he now did not know what to do except keep going, keep trying.

Perhaps he could find some new fount of knowledge on another realm. Perhaps this would turn out to be Norns' doing, bringing him to where he needed to be to find the answers he sought. Perhaps. Loki tried to believe it was so. At the very least, it would buy him time.

Deep down, though, he felt as if he were sinking into dark, still water, lungs filling, hands reaching above him but finding nothing to grab hold of, continuing to slip as the light faded away.

An hour before, he had put on his armor, gathered his weapons, and his thoughts had been silent in his head. The feeling of breathing as he tightened the straps. The singing sound of a blade sliding in its sheath.

He did not care that they would soon be at war. Did not care how many would be lost. Only that it would complicate matters for him.

Out of the city, he glanced back once at Asgard where it lay shrouded and no longer gleaming, and he felt no loss, no sorrow. Only a faint sickness for which he could determine no cause. He turned away and thought of it no more.

As they trod toward the mouth of the observatory, he stayed a little behind Thor, both because he was determined to guard his brother and because that way he did not have to see Thor's face, the emptiness of it, somehow more frightening than rage.

Thor had barely spoken to him since the last time. When Thor chanced to look at him, his gaze was unreadable, dark. With blind eyes, Thor seemed to stare through him.

Loki had tried to soothe him, touching him, giving him little smiles, but Thor took no notice of that either.

That morning, he had let Loki bathe him, and Loki had manipulated limbs that were limp, moved only when he guided them. Tugged Thor’s arms up to scrub beneath them and had to hold him by the wrist to keep him from growing distracted at once. Thor’s head lolled on his neck while Loki dried his hair after and combed it, the silky strands slipping between his fingers. Thor did not answer when Loki spoke to him; he gave no sign of recognition when Loki said his name, no response when Loki squeezed his hand or kissed the brow of his bowed head, and Loki was unsure whether he was being ignored or if Thor simply was not aware of him.

Only when the messenger came to say that all was in readiness for the assault on Nidavellir did Thor rouse again, a faint, deadly flicker of light coming into his eyes.

The words of command Thor shouted before the assembled ranks were the most Loki had heard him speak in days, and by far the loudest. The words poured out like a spell and Loki wondered if perhaps it was, watching as the jolt of violent fervor spread through the crowd, hearing the answering thump of fist on shield, the stamp of feet, the rhythmic clatter like a heartbeat of a great beast of destruction.

Now Thor was silent again, grim as he stared ahead, and Loki followed as he always had when they were young, sometimes goading Thor onward, sometimes just wanting to be there with him, no matter what he did. Loki followed, except his brother was no longer the same.

Loki’s legs felt almost too weak to carry him.

XXIV.III

Thor brought the storms with him, the strange light of Nidavellir turning stranger as the Aesir army came, clouds gathering swiftly above. The winds stirred, the sky darkened and lowered, and the rain began. Heavy, oily drops that plashed against the ground, turning it to mud. A tremble of electricity filled the air.

The first battle was a slaughter.

Loki stayed fast at Thor's side, driving his blades into any of the enemy who got too close to his flank, thus he was there to watch every moment of it. And he had seen Thor in battle before, of course, more times than he could count. But this was different. It was different now.

Long ago, Thor had laughed in battle, his face tugged into a joyful smile as he felt the lure of victory before him, the exertion of proving his might. Later, older and sobered to the losses of both sides, there was still a light about him when he fought. Necessity and strength and pride.

When Thor had fought _him_ , that light had dimmed, and hesitation had twined with determination, a plea for peace forever waiting on his lips.

The light was gone now, and Loki could not help but think of those battles as he watched Thor fight, dark and fearsome and unstoppable.

Thor slew every Dwarf that chanced into his path, cutting through enemy after enemy, and sometimes Loki got the feeling that Thor was not truly present. That he was perhaps fighting a thousand other battles, seeing other faces before him. He grunted with the effort of swinging the axe, his eyes narrowed against the gory spray, but without a hint of feeling. Shoulders swelling, tensing. A thousand more tireless strikes and the same angry, empty set of his mouth.

The wet ground around them slowly turned red. Loki could not stop thinking of their own battles. All the times he’d forced Thor to fight him, needing to oppose him, needing to prove himself in the struggle, needing to make Thor suffer.

When Thor happened to glance his direction, face streaked with muck and eyes glowing in a nearby flash of lightning like they were lit from within, Loki could not help but flinch, wondering if Thor was remembering the same thing.

He spent the rest of the battle feeling it on the back of his neck, running like a shiver along his shoulders, like the cold rainwater dripping down his back. He tried to stay unnoticed. Tried not to catch Thor’s attention. Tried to keep out of his way as he fought onward, for days without rest, axe cutting through air, through screaming flesh, through bone.

Like this, Thor might not know friend from foe. Thor might not see him, or might not care if he did.


	25. Chapter 25

XXV.I

The battle ended with the enemy's disappearance.

Those Dwarves who survived had fled, retreated into hidden holes, and the army of Asgard was left blinking upon the ruin of the surface, amongst the field of trodden mud and corpses.

Short with exhaustion, Loki snapped orders at those around him.

Thor stood swaying, staring out at the dim horizon, the axe still dangling from his hand.

Loki was in the middle of shouting orders to set up an encampment—they all needed rest, shelter, they needed to set up sentries to keep watch—when Thor turned his head, growling to make ready.

"For what?" Loki spat. But then he saw it in the distance. A haze, a shadow, picked out with a few sparking glimmers of light. Another army. Or several more.

Minutes later, scouts came rushing back with word that it was an _alliance_. Alfar and Vanir stood beside the remaining Dvergar, a line against the Aesir forces, voices calling for a halt, a parley.

It was the first pause, the first hesitation; Loki cast his glance across the army of Asgard and saw the faces of those with Vanir blood themselves, or who counted Alfar among their friends. The twinge of uncertainty where all had been firm but moments before.

Thor turned, looming before his men, his shadow seeming to grow all around him, creeping across the ground.

"Fight,” he growled, voice low but resounding. “Or I will slay you myself."

The battle was soon begun.

And it went on, the force arrayed against them many times their size. Well armed, rested, prepared. The enemy armies had chosen the moment of their advance, had taken their choice of battlefield.

And still the Aesir struck them like a hammer, destruction swift and hard and unavoidable. Cut through them like a scythe through a stand of grain. Thor leading, all the rest roaring behind, faces like onrushing death.

It went on for days without cease, the enemy shaken, edges of their line turned ragged. The breaking of their ranks invited the Aesir forward to overtake them, overwhelm them, engulf them, and there were no prisoners. There was no mercy. Only Vanir lying dead. Elves maimed and fallen, blood soaking their flowing hair. Dwarves spitting before the cruel blade ran them through.

In the end, the alliance was routed, and into the Dwarven tunnels the battle finally led. Those of the enemy who survived thought to evade them that way. Into the fathomless dark.

But the Aesir knew no fear, and there was grim, vicious laughter as Thor’s order was carried along the lines, to follow. To make sure none escaped the vengeance of Asgard.

Loki looked to his brother, staring off with dark eyes full of a mindless determination, and only felt numb.

XXV.II

The young Dwarf clutched both her hands to her chest as she huddled in the farthest-back reaches of a tunnel arm, a few of her brothers and sisters nearby. They had been waiting for days, and no one had come to get them; she tried not to think what that meant.

There was only the faint blue glow of a few tunnel beetles clinging here and there to walls and roof, but Dvergar needed no light, and there was nothing to see anyway but the uneven shape of the hollow extending away into the distance.

They could hear, though, what was happening above. For days the booming thunder of battle on the surface filtered down into their underground lair, and for a while her parents had worn brave faces, telling them that it would not last long. That they had endured such things before; that they would do so again, and they were safe where they were.

But then it had stopped. Then there had come another sound instead, that of the ground breaking in great swathes, collapsing inward.

Now the girl pressed her face to her knees and tried not to listen to the faint echoes. There was fighting going on in the tunnels only two or three levels above. There was a constant sound of screams, the noise rising and falling, punctuated with roars and the drumming of feet and weapons.

She remembered her father shouting in bitter rage that the Aesir were their allies, that they had no _cause_ —

But now it was days since she had seen her father. Since he and her mother both had left, along with everyone else large enough to swing an axe or hold a pike.

She was almost weeping and did not notice the noise growing until it was upon them, the patter of running feet, the harsh breaths, the scream and the sprawling tumble of a body, but then she could see them silhouetted in the rise of the tunnel.

She had never seen Aesir before, and she had never been more terrified than in that moment, for he was larger than she could have imagined from the tales, and he was soaked in blood and muck so that even his hair was dark with it, the only white his teeth between the sneer of his lips as he pressed his foot down upon the chest of the Dwarf he had pinned to the ground.

The Dwarf cursed him, vowed vengeance, swore that there would never again be peace between Asgard and Nidavellir.

The As did not answer. He merely growled as the Dwarf’s voice cut off with a rapid cracking sound, a dull popping, a wet gurgle, and in the faint light she could see the splutter of blood gushing up from the Dwarf’s mouth as he writhed. It was the only motion, the only sound, and she became all at once aware of the faint noise of her own heartbeat as she held her breath.

He could not see them. She was sure he couldn’t. They were hidden in the shadows, in the darkest part of the tunnel. She stayed completely still, feeling the huddle of her siblings at her back and she willed them to be silent, willed none of them to begin to cry.

It was only then that another As who had before been skulking behind slipped forward, snakelike. This one was slimmer but just as tall, and his eyes were quick and cold as he glanced around the tunnel—she shrank and clutched tighter around her knees—before turning his gaze to the ground.

The girl stared, so full of fear that it was a sour burn in the pit of her stomach, as the tortured Dwarf ceased to squirm at the sharp, contemptuous kick the smaller man delivered to his head—she squeezed her eyes shut and trembled as her heart pounded.

So she only heard the growl and the sound of a fist striking flesh. The little offended cry of pain and the brief struggling scuffle.

When she opened her eyes just a slit, unable to bear it no longer, the smaller man was rubbing at his upper arm, the larger looming over him.

“If you’re wholly done amusing yourself, brother,” the smaller man said in a hiss.

More footsteps as they retreated, and there was a rumble like thunder that faded away to silence, and then they were gone, leaving the dead Dwarf where he lay.

But the girl was still trembling, stiff with horror, from the murder, the brutality she had witnessed too far from the world of her family, her sisters and brothers and parents and all their other kin, for her to comprehend it.

It was a long time before she and her siblings dared to emerge from their hiding place.

XXV.III

They fought their way through the tunnels for days. Loki lost track at some point—harder than usual to know how much time had passed, down in the impenetrable, endless darkness.

He could perhaps have figured out how many times they had rested, though: it wasn’t many.

Thor seemed determined to hunt down the entire population of Nidavellir, his axe scraping along the dry ground as he trod onward, stopping every now and then to listen down the branching pathways. And Loki rushed after him, his vision pulsing grey and red and white with weariness and lingering adrenalin turned sour in his veins.

They had been with an entire company at first, but smaller teams had peeled off into side tunnels, pursuing faint noises or smells of smoke or other tracks and traces.

Of those who remained with them, some had fallen to the enemy as days passed. Others had simply disappeared. And in the end, the two of them were all that was left.

Thor had insisted that they must go on, and Loki had tried to argue only briefly, subsiding at Thor’s glare, the twitch in the arm that held the axe. He had held up his hands then and agreed, trotting along at Thor’s side, guarding his flank when—more rarely as time went on—they came up against any resistance.

And at this point, he had no energy even to summon up a ghost light, so they walked in darkness. Often the darkness was so deep it felt like being blind.

Thor's solid, plodding footsteps ahead of him and his own breathing. His own heartbeat and the scrape of the blade on the ground and no other sound at all.

And it was cold in these deep tunnels, cold in a way that made Loki long for warmth, for comfort that seemed impossibly far from where they were. He knew what warmth he wanted, right beside him and nowhere. In the darkness he found himself nearly hallucinating, memories shimmering before his eyes.

He tried to push those thoughts away, but there was little to distract him in the dark, in the long silence.

Eventually it reached a point where they had come across no other living things in what was surely days of wandering in the dark. No Dvergar, no Aesir. Not even the sorts of creatures that one usually encounters in tunnels and caves.

"Thor," Loki whispered, feeling that it would be impossible to speak any louder.

A grunt in reply. The soft, steady pace continuing.

"Thor, we should go back. There is no one left."

Thor did not answer at once, and when he did it was a grumble that gritted against the walls and faded, muffled, in the darkness.

"... made them break it… know you did it..."

Loki trotted a few paces, trying to catch up, to catch Thor's words before they were lost.

"... trickster…  faithless…” Thor went on, a low and hateful murmur. “... hate me, made deals with them to hurt me... vengeance for... wanted you at my side..."

Loki pieced together the words and his breathing stuttered, heart racing and legs weak. The axe scraped along the ground in the darkness and Thor's mumbles filled the hollow, echoing air.

They were wholly alone, in the dark.

An hour later, Loki sat propped against the side of the tunnel, tears running down his face and his brother lying dead beside him. Loki’s hand pressed against his own bleeding wound, where the axe’s blade had grazed against his arm, days of exhaustion catching up to him, making him unable to move fast enough to get away. He had almost not. Thor had almost killed him, and Loki had fought back wildly, knife plunging into soft flesh that no other enemy ever got close enough to reach.

He'd had no choice this time.

It was frustration more than pain that made him scream, the blood seeping between his fingers and his throat swollen with sobs, but the sound echoed horribly in that place, and the ensuing silence could have swallowed him alive.


	26. Chapter 26

XXVI.I

The only thing that improved after Thor woke was that he seemed done with the tunnels. He picked up his axe and wandered along a little more, but without much intention. He glanced at Loki sometimes, unreadable, making Loki tense, nerves frayed.

“We must continue,” Thor grumbled after a few more hours passed.

“What?”

It took some prodding to get Thor to explain, and when he finally did, Loki shuddered.

He tried to delay, to think of some third path—he did not want to remain there, in the dark tunnels. But what Thor wanted seemed to offer a different sort of horror.

After waiting as long as he could stand it and finding himself unable to come up with any other idea, he obeyed and brought Thor to a passage to another realm.

"This one is nearest," Loki said, brows knitting when he found what he sought. "But it goes to Svartalfheim."

Thor seemed unconcerned by this. Or worse, the edge of his mouth turning down in distaste, unpleasant memories of Dökkálfar surely trickling through his mind. Plenty to revenge himself for, to feed his endless anger.

Then Thor simply nodded, and they went through.

The place they came to seemed empty and dead already, the wind whistling across ashen ground, sheltered against a bare cliff face that extended upward to a dark and sickly sky. But after so long in darkness, even that sight was welcome and had Loki breathing in deep gulps of air, feeling like he had not breathed properly in days.

Thor took no notice, turning in the direction of the faintly lighter glow on the horizon, between the tallest of the jagged mountains, and stumbling toward it.

Somehow, even in that place, Thor’s presence caused storms to gather, and before long tepid water was hissing down from the clouds—Loki wanted to tip his head back and catch the drops on his tongue, but the smell of sulfur that came down with them and filled the air put him off the idea.

He did let it wash some of the grime from his hands, his face, combing fingers through his hair and slicking it back once it was wet enough, feeling just a bit cleaner for it, just a bit refreshed.

The rainwater trickled down Thor’s skin as well, but Loki did not notice at first. Did not notice because the dark streaks remained once the grit had been rinsed away. Intricate networks of capillaries, broken and darkened to black beneath the pale, cold grey of Thor’s skin like veins in marble. They marred his throat, his chest, the fleshy parts of his arms. His cheeks and the thin, fragile tissue around his eyes.

Loki had not been tending to him, had not had the sense or the energy even if Thor had been willing to stay still for it. And now Loki reached out to touch, to try—

Thor shoved him back without a word. Only a growl. A glare. And he continued walking, though Loki had no idea if there was any reason for the direction he had chosen, and in that moment he did not feel inclined to ask.

He followed as the rain trailed off, that brief shower the extent of what that desolate realm could bring forth. The last few sprinkles fell onto barely dampened rills of dust, the ground having already swallowed the rest.

And soon enough, Thor’s choice proved out. The shadows began to creep around them, taking on solid forms, shapes of bending limbs that held bows and spears.

The war came to them. Thor hefted his axe. Loki shuddered and readied his blades and all the magic he could summon.

And in the end, it was no different from Nidavellir.

A realm razed, ruined, blood in pools sinking into the dark ground. A smell of rot on the air. The sparse crumbling brush burning into flakes of ash where Thor's rage had called down storms of dry lightning, his face contorted with hatred. The strike of his axe sparking bright and wild, the most destructive of fires.

City after city. Land after land. The entire realm, and then the next. Thor's anger carried them, Loki trailing along in his wake, and behind them was nothing but death.

XXVI.II

And yet when they came to the end of enemies was the most perilous of times. Loki often had to save himself when Thor found no more bodies to fall beneath the swing of his axe, and he would turn, eyes dark and burning, to look at him, full of accusation.

Loki had to do it often, but it was getting harder.

It seemed Thor was truly growing harder to kill, like something was seeping into his cells and solidifying them, like minerals filtering into wood to turn it into stone. It seemed he had to plunge his knife with greater force, twisting it at the depth of Thor's chest, like he was cutting through something more solid than flesh. Or Loki’s arm was growing weaker, his resolve less solid.

He only knew he hated it more each time.

"Brother, stop," he pleaded, knowing already that he wouldn’t, while Thor advanced on him, furious, weapon raised. “Brother...”

He felt he barely had the strength to shove the knife in, and he hissed at the feel of blood gushing out against his fingers, his knife nearly stuck. He yanked it back, teeth clenched, feeling flesh tear.

It was not just the toughness of his flesh, either, but his hardiness.

Loki had to drive the blade in a third time before Thor at last slumped back and collapsed, gasping, writhing. On his hands and knees on the ground, tilting, still trying to get up again, then slumping sideways and lying curled and trembling, his hands reaching out weakly for nothing, clenching on air. He moaned, a pathetic sound.

And that, that was the moment Loki truly hated. His brow pinched, his own guts twisted as Thor turned from a creature of rage to his dying brother once again, hurting and confused. Loki tried to comfort him, but it was never more than a few moments, never enough time, even when he was right there at his side. He knelt, clasped Thor’s hand, stroked his brow, but his eyes were already going dim.

And then it was over again, and Loki was sprawling back panting, feeling his weariness anew. Blinking up at the sky, the unfamiliar stars, exhaustion making everything seem to spin.

He no longer rushed to bring Thor back. He needed the respite, needed time to recover himself.

When his breath returned, he rolled to his side so that he could lie against Thor's form as it cooled, missing him terribly. Stroking Thor's face and kissing him while he could, feeling ill inside and choking back a sob when his brother’s dead body of course made no response.

Eventually, though he felt no more rested, Loki wiped at his face and steeled himself and sat up to try it all over again. Someday he would get it right and he would have Thor back, as he used to be. As he was supposed to be.

He had to. Loki could not live without Thor, could not go on without his brother. So there had to be a way.

XXVI.III

They were in Muspelheim, its smoking ruin, when the deep silence fell.

They had come to the end of enemies some days before, and Loki had killed and revived his brother again, and since he’d opened his eyes he had been driving them onward, searching for more, more outlets for his anger, more foes to bear the brunt of his retaliation for wrongs done to him.

And they had found no one.

Thor had grown agitated at first, his steps jerky, trembles of thwarted anticipation rolling through him. But now he had turned sluggish, head drooping, shoulders bent.

He slowed, and Loki approached, taking steps nearer to little reaction. A glance. An uncertain frown.

Loki’s own shoulders fell in a sigh.

"Come, brother,” he said, reaching out for Thor’s hand, a deep longing for sleep making itself known now that rest was a possibility.

And Thor simply went along, eyes heavy-lidded, face grey. Ash raining around them.

Loki’s exhaustion was so deep that he barely bothered to make up a bed for them, spreading his cape upon the first likely spot they came to, before coaxing Thor onto it and lying down beside him. His weariness made it impossible to do more than put his head down, murmuring a few slurred words to Thor to wake him at need, and immediately plunged into dreams.

He woke later to find Thor lying beside him, eyes open in the red-hued dark.

Loki rolled onto his side and let his eyes close again, just for a little bit longer, sinking back down into slumber.

When he woke the second time, Thor had not moved. His eyelids were still peeled back, open, staring. Pale and glazed. But Loki knew, somehow, that he had not slept at all. That he _would not_ sleep, no matter how long they lay there.

He was not quite still, though. Shudders, twitches, spasms. Limbs that jerked and then went slack. Eyes that roved wildly as if watching things Loki could not see, things that flashed and flitted right before his face. The occasional rough, wretched, wordless sound rumbling from his throat.

And when Loki spoke his name, he did not respond.  

Cautiously, Loki touched him, nudged him, but the trance did not release him. Thor only twitched and shuddered, and all Loki could do was lie there watching until it passed, until Thor lay merely shivering again and sweat burst on his brow and something like confusion blinked into his eyes, a whimper emerging from the hollow of his chest.

When Loki moved closer, put an arm around him, Thor let him. Loki curled against his brother, protective, breath ghosting upon the skin of a broad, beautiful shoulder that felt like clay, slick and cold against his lips.

Thor began trembling harder at the touch, stiffening with harsh breaths, wheezing sobs.

Loki gritted his teeth and would not let go.

“How about Midgard next?” he asked in a whisper when Thor at last calmed.

He had been thinking of it, pondering whether perhaps things would be different there, in the fragile mortal realm Thor had once so dearly loved. A place he had always tried to protect. At least his rages might not be so all-consuming there.

It was worth a try, and Loki sighed and held on tighter when Thor gave a soft little nod of acquiescence.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here we are at the end. I kinda can't believe it's over, and I'm very grateful to everyone who's taken a moment to let me know you were enjoying this thing. 
> 
> Also immensely grateful to [Lise](http://gorgeousgalatea.tumblr.com/), who listened to me babble about this many times over the years and offered much support and encouragement, to [Schaudwen](http://schaudwen.tumblr.com/), who very patiently bounced around ideas with me when I was waffling about the ending, and to [Alex](https://twice-verdant.tumblr.com/), whose wise insights and suggestions made this last chapter way better than it was. 
> 
> Thank you all, and I hope the ending won't disappoint!

XXVII.I

In the end, Loki was not sure whether going to Midgard had been a good idea or not.

It did not bring out rages in Thor but something else, and so Loki had made them both unnoticeable as they wandered—as Thor shuffled aimlessly along the concrete pathways, peering here and there as if he were lost, or as if he had lost something.

He drew up short in the mouth of an alleyway, grey and empty, and he stared at a spot on the ground as around them, greasy rain began to fall in little fits, drops mingling together on pavement that smelled of machines and oil and refuse.

Thor stared at a particular spot, and he began to whimper.

Loki beside him jolted as he recognized where they were. The very spot where he’d killed Thor for the first time, and Thor was shuddering as he stood over it, face turned to the ground, then tilting back, up at the tall, quiet buildings around them. Troubled, confused, tears welling up in his eyes catching the yellowish light of the streetlamp.

Loki swallowed back his terror, stole up to Thor’s side, wrapped an arm around him.

“Might we go elsewhere, brother?” Loki murmured. “I dislike these filthy Midgardian cities. I miss the green of the forests.”

Thor did not protest, did not react as Loki flickered them across a distance, a dark curtain falling around them before they reemerged in a forest clearing. At least the forest clearings in that part of Midgard all looked much alike, and there was no way of knowing if it might be the same one, the mountainside where he had first brought Thor back.

In that place it was just after dusk, and even the inevitable weather above could not completely spoil it, the deep violet of the sky, the majesty of the thick clouds moving swift with the wind.

Thor glanced up at it, took a deep breath of the fresh forest air. Or tried to, gasping.

That had been happening often of late. Sometimes he seemed unable to fill his lungs, and when he coughed, it was a painful, popping, liquid sound. He did so now and spat on the rocks.

Loki came to rub at his back, between his shoulder blades, when he caught the sight of blood in what he’d spat, thick and deep red. And then he caught sight of Thor looking at him, silent. Bruised lids low and weary over blind-pale eyes.

“It’s all right, brother,” Loki soothed, trying to smile. “It’s nothing that can’t be fixed. Just wait here a moment and I’ll bring back something to help. You’ll feel better again very soon.”

And that was how he left Thor sitting with his back to the trunk of a tree, wheezing through his breaths, staring at the sky, while he trod through the pathless woods and paced under the dripping leaves, the cold drops sharp and piercing on his skin, heart frantic and mind empty.

He did not know what to do. In a place much like this one, he had come up with the spell, and he had felt sure that he could do it. That he could bring Thor back as if nothing had ever happened, as if he had never—

He squeezed his eyes shut, remembering the battle again. The feeling of victory, what he had thought he wanted.

After only a few minutes he returned. Stepped into the clearing.

"I'm sorry, brother," he said. He hadn't brought back anything, of course. And Thor did not move, just wheezed and gazed up at him as Loki sat beside him.

Thor was still beautiful. Loki didn't think he could ever see anything else in Thor. Heart aching, he touched Thor's hair, the color of rotted straw. Loved his face, even the black bruises upon it, nuzzling his own against Thor's cheek. Kissed him, and Thor's lips parted, and Loki did not mind the cold, the taste of blood, the dark odor.

Thor allowed it for only a moment before flinching back, mouth gasping open, as if such a small thing made it too difficult to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” Loki repeated as he touched Thor, held him, hands gliding over the stains upon his skin. He stroked Thor’s back through his filthy tunic and felt his bones, felt him shivering, felt the tremble of a whine as the touch proved painful. Thor’s body frail and hardened. The organs within him ceasing their function, swelling and shrinking again... yet still he lived, by will, by spell upon spell.

And Thor gazed at him with eyes so hurt, so sad, that Loki could not bear it. And he had been seeing Thor hurt and hurt and hurt for months.

Loki had never wanted to kill his brother. He had never wanted Thor to die. He had not truly believed Thor _could_ die. But Loki had slain him so many times he could not remember, and now he finally understood.

The spell had not worked because what he did could not be undone. He could not go back and save Thor from his own hand, his own anger, his own stupidity. He had killed his brother. And the moment Thor died, any regret was too late.

No spell, no plea, no sacrifice could change that, no matter what he felt. No matter how much Loki loved him.

He pressed his brow against his brother’s, leaned against him, heart aching, eyes squeezed tight.

“I’m sorry.”

Their mother had been right. He needed to let Thor go. Thor was suffering, if he was still truly there at all, and Loki would never be able to bring him back. Would never be able to restore him.

If he did not stop himself, he would keep doing this forever, no matter how hopeless it was. Thor would continue to suffer, and it would be for nothing. For something that Loki would never be able to achieve. He would keep bringing Thor back in an endless cycle until he himself was killed or Thor’s body crumbled to dust.

Loki could not breathe around the sob trapped in his throat.

He had lost his brother.

And he resolved that the next time Thor died would be the last. Loki would mourn him one final time, and the ordeal would be over. The realms ravaged. The future empty and bleak.

But until then, for however long, Loki still had Thor beside him, and he would not give up a single moment.

XXVII.II

_Thor struggled._

_He struggled between the dreams and the dark fog, and he was not entirely sure which was real anymore._

_When he was in the nightmares, he knew they were nightmares. Dreams that held him far too long, dragging him through horror after horror, never ending. They must be nightmares, for in them his brother murdered him, vicious teeth and burning eyes and the cold pain of a knife in his chest, and it could not be anything but a dream for he would wake again moments later, unharmed. It had to be a dream, because he was not dead._

_And they must be nightmares, for they mingled his dearest, most secret wishes with fear and confusion and dread, with actions that he knew he could never take._

_In the dreams, he asked Loki to come home and he did. Loki agreed to dwell with him, and when he kissed his brother as he had always longed to do, Loki responded as if he had wished it as well, and held him, and Thor wept at something as simple as closeness and his brother’s warmth against him. His brother's touch upon his bare skin._

_In the same dreams, he watched like a spectator as his father’s corpse fell from his hands to the floor, the neck snapped, the twitching finally stopped. He lashed out at his friends. He grew hollow, like an empty vessel, and each tangled nerve sparked only to pain, to ache, to agony like an itch._

_They must be dreams, for he could make no sense of them._

_They had to be nightmares, and Thor struggled to waken._

_But sometimes, he felt he had opened his eyes… and found himself somewhere else entirely. A dark place, a place of mists, hollow and lonely. And he might have accepted this as a true waking, except that his entire body was numb._

_The sensation was like a sleeping limb, but it was everywhere. Like his body was something distant, vague and unattached to him, and the part of him that he was moving—his arms wrapping around his knees as he sat on the chill ground—was something other than his own form. It was unsettling._

_Perhaps that place was a dream as well. Swirling mists that sometimes took on shapes that seemed familiar and moved about him while he looked on in dreadful confusion, unable to understand. Shadows and deeper darkness, pillars of fog that seemed almost solid, approaching him and then dissolving away. They frightened Thor, though he was not entirely sure why. Sometimes he tried to bat them away, watched the mists swirl and reform. Sometimes he fled, glanced back to see if they followed._

_He wanted this to be a dream as well, because he wanted to waken from it. He tried to, pinching his own arms, or squeezing his eyes shut for what might have been moments or centuries, opening them with force and hoping to see something else than the formless grey._

_The only respite was the other dreams, which he slipped in and out of for reasons he could never fathom._

_Thor struggled to waken._

_It was like struggling through thick mud, or wading through flood water, with the accompanying feeling of bone-deep chill._

_In the other dreams, he sat upon a dark throne, waged an unjust war, severed limbs from bodies with a sharp-bladed axe. Did dreadful, awful things. Gazed down unfeeling at his own blood-smeared hands._

_In the dreams of mist, everything was growing darker and harder to see, and he felt a fog of confusion descending to match the cold damp that brushed his skin, and he spent hours (or perhaps more) lost to it, sitting with his mouth slack, his eyes dull and unfocused. It was hard to break free from it, hard to find any reason to resist._

_But he held tight to his belief that he had heard it: his brother calling to him from somewhere far away._

_Thor struggled, trying to force his eyes to open, because he knew, deep in his heart, that Loki was calling for him. Pleading. Telling him to waken, to come back._

_He swore he had heard it a few times, always far and faint, but Thor struggled toward it, in the peculiar directionless way of that place, of those dreams. It seemed always to be getting farther, yet he did not give up._

_His brother needed him. So Thor would not fail._

_And then one day the fog seemed to thin._

_The light grew a little brighter. He looked around and did not know where he was, did not recognize the patterns of formless shifting shadows but had a peculiar sense that he should, and his breath caught as he gathered himself to try again to wake._

_He had heard Loki's voice, very near this time, crying for him, and though it felt like struggling against a strong current he forced his way toward it, toward where the fog thinned—_

He woke up to terrible pain and a sudden flood of memory and clarity all around him, a clarity that he had forgotten the world could hold.

XXVII.III

Loki had fallen asleep in that clearing, curled up beside his brother, and he woke to the sound of sobbing, sobbing that continued even after he had shaken off the traces of his dreams.

Thor hunched over his knees, arms wrapped around himself, tears flowing down his face. Head bowed and hair fallen across like a ragged veil. Loki stared, worried. Unsure what he was seeing.

It had been a long time since Thor had wept like that.

Seeming to tremble, Thor wiped at his face, caught sight of the maze of blackened capillaries on his own hands and shuddered, but the tears kept coming so he continued to wipe at his eyes with that ruined hand.

“Loki,” he said at last in voice soft and rough as if he had not spoken for a very long time. “Loki, what has happened to me? What have I done?”

The land all around was in darkness, and Loki could hardly breathe, and Thor continued to weep, the sound ugly and wretched. Wet sobs and choked gasps that sounded thick in his throat.

Loki felt frozen as Thor spoke his name again and again.

He could not move, could not answer, could not make himself reach out to offer anything, any lies or comfort. But he should. He should. Thor was sobbing, rubbing his hands across his crumpled face and trembling in his broad shoulders, and Loki wanted to scream with every pitiful, hiccupping breath from his brother's mouth. He wanted to take Thor in his arms and hold him, soothe him, somehow take the hurt away. The need to do so rose like a physical ache.

But he was frozen in place by grief and terror, waiting for the change that he knew would come, like a change in the wind. The inevitable turn to rage that had always followed outbursts like this.

Loki fumbled at his side for his knife, to make sure it was near; he didn’t want to use it, but he might not have a choice.

He steeled himself for what was to come. If it was to be the last time...

When he heard Thor’s voice again, it was in a whimper turning feral, stretching thin, and he saw Thor’s fists tightening, his mouth twisting in fury.

“Loki, _what have you let me do_?”

The anger on Thor’s face was a blaze as he reached for Loki, reaching for his throat with clawed hands outstretched.

In panic, unthinking, Loki struck out with the knife clutched tight in his hand, pushed it deep between Thor’s ribs until the blood rushed back over his knuckles, spurted across his palm, slipped between his fingers.

Thor stopped short with a searing cry, staring down at the blade hilted deep in his chest. And only then did Loki see it.

Thor’s eyes were wide and wet and frightened.

And so very clear and blue, the pale haze gone as if it had never been.

In shock, Loki scrambled forward with his own trembling whimper, to catch Thor as he fell. To lay him down and pull the blade gently back and try, frantically, to heal the wound.

There was so much blood, coming so fast.

Loki’s gaze flickered between the wound and Thor’s face, caught between doing everything he could to stanch the bleeding and needing to tell him everything.

“Brother, I’m sorry,” he choked out as he worked.

Thor’s face was growing pale, the little color there had been draining from it. He was trying to do something with his hands, trying to reach for Loki, perhaps, but they were slow, uncoordinated. Tears blinked from the corners of his eyes, and Loki stared back into the perfect blue.

“Loki, why…” Thor breathed, and the disbelief in his voice made Loki sob.

“I never meant for any of this. I love you. I didn't want…”

He spared one hand to stroke along the side of Thor’s face. More tears rolled from Thor’s eyes, diluting the blood on Loki’s fingertips, making red trails down his temples into his hair. Briefly Loki leaned down to press a kiss to Thor’s soft cheek.

“I’m going to fix this, brother. Just stay with me. Please.”

Thor’s lip was trembling and on his face was dreadful fear and hurt and sorrow, and his groping hand connected with Loki’s wrist and grabbed, held tight, squeezing.

Loki was still trying to heal him when Thor’s grip relaxed. When the spark went out of his eyes. When his breathing shuddered to a halt and his pulse trailed away into stillness beneath the thin flesh of his neck.

Loki gathered up his body and held him close and could not move, could not breathe, could not feel anything but a crushing pain inside. Though he thought he could still hear someone crying. A wail carried on the wind.

A long while later, he finally swallowed the lump in his throat and rubbed the salt from his face. Laid his brother’s body down, heart clenching as he did so.

Thor had been restored after so long. Loki knew he had been. And then Loki had cut his life from him in one frantic motion, killing Thor again nearly the moment he had him back.

It _could not_ have been his one chance, their one reprieve. And it _had_ to mean that Thor was still there, within that ruined body, within reach.

And though Loki had no idea how or why it had happened, if Thor had returned once…

Loki could not stop. He had to try again, and he leaned down to kiss Thor’s brow like a promise, lips soft on cold skin.

And there, in that same dark clearing with wet leaves rustling overhead, he began, whispering again the words of the spell.

When Thor's eyes opened to the first glow of Midgard’s sun, though, they were empty, unfeeling as stone, cold as a corpse. Staring at him, through him.

Loki tried to smile at him, tears dripping down to the upturned corners of his mouth, while something sank inside him.

It could not have been his only chance. It could not.

And it did not matter anyway, for now he knew he could not cease.

He had watched the world end rather than let Thor die. Loki could not let him go. He needed to have his brother back. And he would keep trying forever, whether there was hope or none. 

***


End file.
